


News of the Underworld

by rhapsodicking



Series: The Godfucker Journals [1]
Category: Original Work, Queen (Band), Real Person Fiction
Genre: Age Difference, Body Horror, Consensual Incest Roleplay, Cross-Generation Relationship, Current Events, Dead People, Dreams, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Fourth Wall, Genderfuck, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Metafiction, Mysticism, Other, POV First Person, POV Original Character, Past Abuse, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Recreational Drug Use, References to Addiction, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, References to Depression, References to Drugs, References to Illness, Self-Insert, Size Kink, Substance Abuse, The Astral Plane, Trans Male Character, Transgender Power Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Worldbuilding, mentions of past death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:55:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhapsodicking/pseuds/rhapsodicking
Summary: It is a known fact that humans can become gods, if they are glorious enough and receive enough worship—or perhaps just by magic.Myth and legend also tell us that gods sometimes take mortal lovers.The lives of these blessed and fateful human beings are rarely easy.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Freddie Mercury
Series: The Godfucker Journals [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617682
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. we found the right location--got a lot of pretty lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The astral plane was only a step away if you knew how and I would meet him there."
> 
> In which a casual tryst between mortal and divine lovers occurs, complete with mindblowing sex, and they discuss the future; at the end, an adventure may begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skip to the ending notes for full content warnings.

In a minute I'll start off running. There will be sex, and dead rock stars, and sex with one of those dead rock stars (I'm just friends with the rest, I promise); there will be metaphors and even some purple prose. But let's get one thing out of the way first.

This is **NOT** a 100% true story.

I am forced to confess that upon last measuring, my tale was only approximately 37% objective truth. 12% was utter nonsense, 51% was theology, and, somehow, another 23% or more was love poetry.

Some names have been changed to protect the living. Others have been kept intact to honor the dead.

—Ari Golden-Hart, magician, writer, cat dad, godfucker, hot mess.

* * *

All day long the call from my astral lover tugged at my heart in the material world, until thinking of anything but having him in my arms was nearly impossible; I hurried home from work with the ghost of his song in my ears, eager to join him somewhere just beyond the reality we knew. The astral plane was only a step away if you knew how and I would meet him there.

But first I splashed through puddles of freezing winter rain in the dingy alleyway, pulled open the gate with the broken lock, and climbed the sagging steps to the door of my apartment with its familiar stab holes of unknown origin. I unlocked it, heard the deadbolt clunk out of place, and stepped inside, ready to return to him —

— but my cat was screaming so I fed her first. He would understand.

I was a little warmer when I'd finished, though the decrepit hovel that passed for my small apartment wasn't all that much warmer than outside to start with. It didn't matter. I went to meet him.

It was already dark when I made the offering, spoke the magic words, and loosed my soul onto the astral plane. Reality clung to me first like netting, then like cobwebs, then like mist, and then I was free, starlight glittering all around me as I tumbled through the cosmic sea. I wasn't afraid. I'd bound my soul to his power and would be at his side soon —

I opened my mind's eye fully, blinking stardust out of its corner, and focused. I was in a wide circular room and outside waves crashed. Before me a spiral staircase rose up.

"A lighthouse?" I said. There was no answer but I felt a sense of amusement from him somewhere, felt the hint of his radiance at the top of the stairs. I started climbing.

It was almost always different when I visited him — there were certain locales he brought me back to again and again, but usually I wound up somewhere new. This was no exception. I made my way up the stairs; the walls around me glowed faintly with words from an unknown language scrawled on them in pure light. I knew without being able to read the words that they were lyrics, and as I climbed I began to hear faint music.

Finally I opened the door and stepped out into a wide loft surrounded by glass.

Curved like a crescent moon against one half of the circular room was a luxurious daybed piled with satin pillows; there were some tables scattered with wine, treats, and trinkets next to it. That was typical of his locations; the rest though —

The other half of the room featured a grand piano, in the midst of being played; the music rose up from it, turned to brilliant light up above, and formed a shining slowly spinning ball hanging like an ethereal chandelier in midair.

"I see, it _is_ a lighthouse," I blurted out. It made sense now —

He sat at the piano, playing artlessly with long slender fingers. As usual for our trysts, he was in the form of the _kouris_ , a youth of twenty or so who looked like the perfect ideal of which his young mortal self had been a material shadow. Flawless sleek black hair fell loosely in waves around a long, strong-featured face (a hint of an overbite at the upper lip; some things cannot be too much improved upon, cannot be made flawless). His body was lithe, nymphishly delicate but strong, those quick long-fingered hands promising a dancer's grace as they flowed across the keys. But as usual I was most enraptured by his eyes, fathomlessly dark and full of a holy inner light.

It took me a moment to recognize the song he was playing, because music was always slightly different on the astral — purer, more true. But still it only took that moment, only those first three notes; anyone would have recognized _this_ song.

I waited for him to start singing that famous enigmatic lament, to cry out to his holy mother as always, but instead he slowed his playing to a halt (above him, the light also slowed and stopped turning, but remained bright) and sat there in silence, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. Finally he glanced sidelong at me, a glint in his eyes, and said, "Well? You're not starstruck, are you? It's been too long."

He was right, it had been almost three years now since he had dropped his astral disguise and revealed himself to me, but — "I'm always starstruck by you," I said. "Even now."

He laughed and turned around on the bench. He was dressed in loose iridescent white silks like the more mystical version of something the band would've worn at an early concert and they rustled just faintly as he moved. "Do you think I am not by you? I was playing an old song just now but I want to compose a million more to you!"

A blush threatened to rise to my face. "It's different," I said. "I'm not —" I caught myself and fell silent.

He jumped lightly to his feet (I watched his every motion) and started walking towards me. "Let's not go over this old routine again," he said. "I'm going to _keep_ telling you how brilliant and precious you are to me, love — not just me either."

"I love you," I said without thinking. 

He tipped his head to the side and his eyes narrowed just slightly. "Oh, you're trying to throw me off," he said. "Trying to change the subject."

"No!" I said. "No, I just —" I faltered. Then I said again: "I love you — I don't want to think about _me_ when I'm with you, I just want to have you in my arms and lose myself in your glory."

He smiled and the flicker of irritation disappeared from his face and my heart ached. "Fine, fine," he said. "Don't worry, darling — we don't have to talk about your low self-esteem tonight."

I rolled my eyes. "You'll find a way to bring it up," I said.

His mouth curled into a pout. "You have so much _faith_ in my _bitchiness_ , love."

"No," I said. Then, "Well, maybe, but when you make that face at me I just want —" My breath caught in my throat and I stopped.

He was just a couple feet away from me now and he reached out to me. "You want me," he said softly, his mouth just slightly parted; I perceived that I was a few inches taller than him now on the astral, though I was a few inches shorter materially, and I —

I reached out and pressed my hand to his cheek. "Yes," I said. "I always do. I go mad thinking of you, honey."

He pressed his lips together cutely, an old habit of swallowing an overbite that was now not quite so pronounced. Then he ducked his head, looked up at me through those perfect eyelashes. "Good," he said. "You think you want _me_ but it can't even compare to how much I want you, love." He straightened up. "Come to bed with me. Darling, fuck me _deep_ tonight —"

I felt his nearness, felt his lust and his yearning; here on the astral plane gods were porous beings, radiating out their essence from their skin the way the perfumes and incenses they loved so much radiated scent. Now I sensed the pure _eros_ of life and love and love of life radiating off his every cell. "Please," I said, reaching out to take hold of one of his hands.

His eyes lit up as I completed the circuit, one hand on his cheek still and the other threading through his fingers, our bodies bound ever so lightly together that way. "God! Keep touching me!"

"I'll be _in_ you soon," I said. "You want it, right?"

"Fuck!" He breathed out. "Yes, of _course_ love, ah God _fill_ me —"

I pulled him into my arms and kissed him roughly, first his cheek, his temples, the soft strands of his hair near his face, and he shivered and sighed in my arms and pressed up against me. "I love you," I murmured into his ear and he pressed his cheek against my jaw. "Ah God just knowing you _graced_ my world for a time, that even now you're out there loving me —"

"You don't have to just know it," he murmured breathlessly. He shifted against me, moved his hands till they cradled my face close to him. "Feel me, darling. I _love_ you."

"Tell me," I said softly.

"You want me to say it —" He sighed. "I still love you —" He looked up at me with stars in his eyes. "I still love you."

The power of the phrase from him crawled up my spine and fractured into a thousand pleasant pieces at the nape of my neck. I kissed him hard on the mouth.

I nearly lost touch with astral reality around me as he kissed back and the force of his hard-won divinity flowed into me along with the power of his love. The next thing I knew he was breathlessly pulling at my clothes, pushing me towards the huge bed. "You're always so impatient," I began but he covered my mouth with his once more before I could continue. His long slender fingers flicked open my belt buckle and started tugging at my pants; I grabbed at his light clothing and started pulling it off his body.

We hit the bed together half-clothed, tumbling over each other, still pulling at fabric, frantic now, and finally he swore under his breath, murmured a lyric-spell, and every article of clothing on us or on the floor behind us exploded into phantasmal glitter and was gone.

— He'd bring our nice outfits back later. This was just theatrics; he loved those, drama queen he was.

I shivered briefly and pressed a hand to his bare chest as he sprawled back against the pillows. "Wait," I said. "I just —"

"Mmm," he breathed out, his eyes hazy with desire. "What?"

I cupped his cheek with one hand and turned his face to me. "I just want to look at you for a minute," I said. "You're so gorgeous."

He looked up at me and his eyes were near delirious with love. "You too," he said softly. "I could look at you for a million years, love. I'd still find something new to love every time."

I blinked tears out of my eyes suddenly. "Freddie," I said to him; his ordinary name felt holy on my lips now. "God, I love you."

"Your eyes enchant me," he said dreamily. "Let me tell you how, darling! Innocence itself is the color of your eyes, love, so blue —"

I kissed him roughly to shut him up. It was terribly embarrassing to hear him rhapsodize about my eyes. I pulled back just enough to murmur, "Fuck you, shut up, they don't compare to yours — there's a million stars in your eyes —"

"Fragments," he murmured, reaching up to touch my face with both hands. "Each of your eyes is an _entire_ star."

"No," I said stubbornly, unable to think of a better riposte.

"Oh yes," he said, his hands shifting, sliding down to my shoulders, my chest; my skin felt electric where his fingertips touched it. "Like a newborn star seen in a dream, darling."

I blushed again and tried to stammer out some response, but he took pity on me, pushed himself up into a sitting position next to me, and pulled me close for a long, sweet kiss —

I shuddered against his body, frantically pressing my mouth against his jaw, his lips, his perfectly shaven chin, the strong lines of his cheekbones, and perception of anything else but his glory began to disappear from my world.

"Haaaaaah —" He breathed roughly out against my cheek. "Yes. Oh, you're really mine." And his hands on my body slid between my legs and cupped me there, one palm cradling my balls and the other my cock.

I couldn't stifle my sudden moan as my etheric body snapped fully into place at that touch.

My cock was different every time I got hard on the astral plane. He loved every shape it took and now he ran his fingers lightly down my stiffening shaft, stroking its twists and ridges with delicate fingertips and then rubbing his thumb on the slightly pointed head.

"Ah love," he said, voice low and rough with desire. I caught sight out of the corner of my eye of a smirk sneaking onto his face. "That must be nearly ten inches and I _know_ I can tease more out of the thing before we're done."

"I'm really yours," I murmured. "I want you so much."

"You always do," he murmured into my ear. "Oh darling I'm so happy when I'm with you."

"Yeah," I said, my own voice uneven. "That makes me even happier, honey, it feels good to serve you. My fucking _queen_."

He shuddered visibly, his breath hitching; he bit his lip. "You satisfy me so well," he said. "There isn't — I haven't found a _word_ for it, love. For everything you are to me. —Look at me."

I looked up from his fingers cradling my cock and balls into his earnest face, his incredible eyes, and I shivered too. "You're so gorgeous," I said. "I want you."

"You'll have me," he said. "Darling, do the work, won't you?"

"What —" I stopped.

He smiled coolly and leaned in a little more, shifting to take both the base of my cock and my balls into one hand. He seemed to cradle me completely; without thinking I leaned into it too, giving myself to him even though I was afraid.

With his other hand he cradled the side of my face. He said, "You need to make your prayer to your holy mother. You know that. It's how we _do_ this thing, darling. Learn her name and she'll give it to you."

"I thought I'd picked," I began, but then I stopped.

"Well," he said, "do you know what it means?"

"Not really," I said.

"It doesn't matter, really," he said. "I didn't know when I asked my soul's mother for her name. But you need to make the leap and take it."

"I'm trying," I said.

"Oh, yes," he said with an impatient flick of his eyes. "You've been trying since I first came to you. _We've_ been trying I should say, like a troubled young lady yearning for motherhood —"

"Then —"

"Fucking finish it, it's _time_ ," he said.

"Why did you bring me here to say this?" I said. "You could have nudged me at that story instead. Kept the door to the astral closed, _forced_ me to work on my devotional art."

He glanced down and I saw the hint of a dark flush across his cheeks. "I wanted you," he said shyly, still not quite meeting my gaze. "Mother might _need_ you but God! I still want you. Stay with me, love."

I breathed out against his cheek — "You just wanted me to fuck you."

He giggled breathlessly, all the stars in the world suddenly glittering in his eyes. "Oh yes, love. Oh yes."

I grabbed him by the hip and the shoulder and I pushed him down to the bed even as I turned him over, roughly. "Enough," I said.

He shivered through his whole body, his eyelids fluttered and his eyes opened wide with delight. "Ah, yes, you'll fuck me now won't you —"

"Yes," I said. "Shh, love, I want you to feel good — give me the lube." I ached for him, I was so hard and so ready to fuck him.

Breathlessly he murmured the words of that lyric-spell and poured the slick fluid into my hands. I stroked it onto my cock and then I took hold of his ass — he shivered and trembled beneath me so — I opened him up and when I set the head of my cock against his hole his breath hitched and he made a soft moan.

"I love you," I said, and I thrust my cock deeply inside of his asshole.

His body took me completely in an instant and he writhed beneath me in dazzled bliss. "Ah — ah _yes_ please more —"

I kissed his cheek, pressed my face against his hair, and I began to grind my cock roughly into him. His asshole was slick and hot and nicely tight on my shaft as I thrust in and pulled out and thrust back in, again and again, losing myself in the terribly sweet rhythm of it, and more than that in the rhythm of his gasping breath, the sweet stifled sobs of ecstasy he made as I filled up his ass with my cock.

His fingers dug into the pillows around him, perfectly painted nails gleaming — I quickly covered them with my hands, slid my own fingers between his, and he whimpered faintly beneath me. "Oh darling it's so _good_ , I'm so happy when we're one body like this, mmm _mmm_ , ah God, yes, _love_ ," he ducked his head against the pillow and just breathed raggedly for a moment, his eyes nearly closed but I could still see a glint of starlight there.

"I love you," I said roughly, still grinding my hips against his, filling him wholly with my pulsing cock. "Ah God, it's so good when I make you feel like this. When you make _me_ feel so good but ah _God_ the look in your eyes, love."

"Kiss me," he said breathlessly. "I need you."

I pressed my mouth to his cheek, to his ear, to his temple, almost biting but shying away at the last moment, and with every kiss I gave him he jerked his body eagerly up against me, taking my cock deeper each time.

"Mmm —" He shivered beneath me. "Touch me. _Pet_ me love, be with me, hold me —"

"Shhh," I murmured into his ear. "I've got you, love." I shifted my weight to pin him down on my cock and he made a small pleased noise and squirmed delightedly against the weight of my hips atop him. I couldn't quite stop a gasp as his body moved around me.

"Please," he said roughly.

I kissed his cheek again and began stroking his hair, threading my fingers through the dark strands; he relaxed a little beneath me and I sighed and kissed the top of his head. "I can't get enough of you," I said. With my other hand I toyed with his hand, twining my fingers between his, rubbing my thumb against his —

He bit his lip and whimpered helplessly. "Haaaah you're too sweet —"

"It's true," I said. I leaned against him, rubbing my cheek on his hair, and I said, "I want to lose myself in your love sometimes — I just want to be this cock fucking you."

"You could if you aren't careful," he murmured. "My love for you is infinite. There's no end to it — darling, the ocean might as well be shallow."

"I know," I said, and I kissed him once more. "It hurts sometimes to think about it — that you're out there loving me the way you do —"

"Yes, oh darling it hurts you _good_ doesn't it," he murmured so sweetly. "God! I want to crush your heart in my hand!"

"You do," I said, "every day, every time I think of you. I wish —"

He sighed beneath me. "You wish _what_ , darling?"

"I don't know," I said, still absently stroking his hand with mine, still idly riding his ass. "I wish you were still in this world. In my world, I mean."

"Oh no you don't," he said, glancing up at me with unimpressed eyes. "Do you think you would be balls-deep in my ass if I were still mortal?"

I blushed. "No but — it doesn't matter. There's so much more you could have given the world."

He said nothing, merely glanced off into the unfathomable distance outside the great windows beyond the bed. I didn't care what he was looking at; I just looked at him. Finally he said, "I gave what I could. And there are things I accomplished in dying —" He bit his lip and then laughed softly. "Tell you the _truth_ , love, I care about those things but right now with you _inside_ me so hot and hard oh love more than anything I'm so happy to be with you. Nothing else really matters, love oh love I _love_ you —"

I tucked my head against his cheek and shuddered. "Freddie," I said. "You make me so happy. My lord, my love, my queen."

"Be with me," he murmured. "Love me."

"Yeah," I said. "I am, I do, I love you."

"Tell me," he murmured. "Oh love, tell me how you love me — I want to hear your words, I want them so."

I kissed his jawline and sighed against his face. "Mmm. Yes. Ah love I love you like I wish I could love my own heart —"

"Ah," he said raggedly. "Oh love you hurt me _too_ sometimes."

"All's fair," I said, "in love and war, and I don't make war." I stroked his hair again. "I love you so much — I've been waiting my whole life to find you."

"And I," he murmured, "have been waiting too — oh darling, gods don't see _time_ the way mortals do, from the moment you called out to me —"

"I didn't," I began, "I didn't even know I was calling to _you_ —"

He ducked his head against the pillows and laughed faintly. "Yes. 'The Lady with Teeth' and you thought you were talking to your lovely demon-goddess Lilith. She let me have you! She saw how much I wanted you!"

I blushed against his cheek and said nothing. "I didn't even know...when I wrote that thing. About — your teeth."

"I did, though," he said patiently. "And I jumped at you. This beautiful broken boy who I could _heal_ crying there in the darkness with all his yearning and all his desperate frustrated _gloriously enormous_ sex. How could I _not_?"

I blinked back tears.

He kept going. "And once I saw you I wanted you like fire through my whole afterlife, from Christmas '91 through infinity. I reached for you too early and hurt you —"

"It doesn't matter," I said; I didn't want to think about that now.

He hesitated, then went on. "You were hidden from me for so long. I wanted you so much and you weren't there and I was so afraid you'd never be there —"

"I'm here now," I said softly. "I am your man and I _know_ it now."

"Don't leave me," he said.

"I won't," I said. "I can't, oh God I never want to be apart from you."

He shuddered. "You're so — I'm so fortunate to have you. I feel selfish! I had so much love as a mortal man and now here I am dead and a _god_ and I'm on your cock and I'm _so_ happy and in love."

I shivered atop him. "It scares me," I murmured, "thinking about you — about _you_ loving me."

"Mmm." He glanced sidelong up at me. "You think you aren't worth it, darling, because you're an idiot. Such a _precious_ idiot to me."

I blushed again and instinctively nuzzled against his throat, pressed deeper into his body.

He sighed and squirmed blissfully beneath me. "Haaaah I just want to lie here beneath you sometimes — feeling you inside me —"

I kissed his cheek, I played with his slim fingers. "We can," I said. "I can tell you more about how much I love you, and we can just lie here with our bodies all tangled up like this. I love it too. I want to be inside you forever."

He shivered and bit his lip. "You're so good to me," he said. "You're so fucking good and I _wish_ I could make you believe it."

"I do," I said. "I do with you. When I'm with you I'm the fucking king."

"Mmm —" He breathed out slowly beneath me and I felt his body sink into the pillows beneath us and I went with it, we were one body now. I was so deep inside him. "And I am the Queen and I fucking love you, darling. I love you so much."

I blinked away tears all of a sudden. My heart hurt as it so often did around him, the hurt of something healing. "Being loved by you," I said softly, "is like being a cat in the warmest sunbeam."

"No, darling," he said, "that's how it feels being loved by _you_ —" A breathless giggle. "We are _brothers_ in that sense. We both love so hard and fast and hot—"

I gave one of his hands a light squeeze and said, "I thought you were my mother." He was fond of that peculiar maternal role in a way I could hardly hope to explain, and he had appeared to me many times in a form befitting the title. If the _kouris_ was the form he took for our casual romantic trysts like this, the Mother was the one he took for the most brutal and vulgar sexual encounters, electric with taboo lusts.

"Oh darling I'm so many things to you," he murmured.

"Sometimes I feel like you're everything," I said. "I don't mind that, when it happens."

He shivered. "I love it," he said, "I love it when your whole heart lights up for me. God! I just want to open you up and hold your heart in my hands those times!"

"I want you to," I said. There was nothing he did to my body here on the astral plane that ever hurt me. When our bodies intertwined I could feel nothing but pleasure.

"Mmm —" His shivers became a shudder and I sighed at the lovely feeling of his body trembling beneath me. "You know what you need to do, love."

There were many things I needed to do for him that I wasn't _ready_ for —

I nipped at his ear and tried to change the subject: "Let's play a game," I said.

He paused. "A game, darling? Now?"

"Yes," I said, "with words. While I'm still balls-deep in your ass. That's how you like it so —"

"Yes," he said. "Oh yes _please_ words are good and everything's better when we're fucking. Darling, what —"

"It starts with the usual phrase," I said, "and then you replace the verb in some way, tweak the rest of it too if you need to — but you have to start it with a letter from the previous verb. Get it?"

He lay slack beneath me for a moment, and then he sighed and said, "I got it, love. Go!"

"Yeah," I said. Then: "I love you."

"Mmm. I _obsess_ over you."

"Ah," I said. "I _savor_ your presence within my soul."

"I adore you," he murmured, and his tone was so soft and plaintive.

I flushed red and buried my face in the crook of his neck but I said: "I desire you like this more than anything."

"Oh _darling_ I'd fucking _ravish_ your heart and soul every second of every day," he spoke back, "if it wouldn't drive you mad."

"You do it anyway, don't bullshit me like that," I said.

He pouted visibly beneath me and said, "Your _move_ , love."

I said nothing and did nothing for a moment, and then I shifted my weight a little (he stifled a gasp beneath me as the motion drove me a little deeper up his asshole) and settled my arms around his shoulders and brought my hands together in front of his face, fingers crooked to form a small symbolic heart: "I fucking _heart_ you, baby."

"Ah —!"

We were frozen there in place for a long moment, his eyes so wide so pure as he stared in bemusement at my gesture.

Then he bit his lip and said, very earnestly, "Oh...then — I must _have_ you," he nipped at my fingers, "I am _enamored_ of you," he teased at my thumbs with his teeth and I groaned a little and squirmed atop him and inside him, "I _ache_ for you," another bite, "I _relish_ your love for me," still biting, still teasing at my fingers and by now I was instinctively giving them to him, letting him toy with my hands — "I'll fucking _take_ you —" And he pulled my hands to his face and kissed them frantically and below his asshole went perfectly tight around my cock.

"Mmm —!" I shuddered and managed to say, "Cheating — that's cheating, that was five different —" I gasped raggedly.

He sulked beneath me, perfectly composed though my cock was so far up his ass. "You broke the rules first," he said.

"I what?"

" _Heart_ isn't a fucking verb, darling," he said.

I paused a long moment. "Okay, boomer," I said.

"What?!"

"Nothing," I amended quickly. Then I said, "Anything can be a verb if you try hard enough."

"Mmm —"

Before he could say anything more I kissed the top of his ear and said softly, "Want me to try nice and hard on your ass, love?"

"Aa _aah_ darling what do you think —"

I drew my hands back, settled them on his shoulders, and I shifted position to drive my cock even deeper into his tight asshole. He bit his lip and shivered beneath me —

Bracing myself on him I began to pound his asshole rough and hard and fast with my cock, my cock so absurdly massive (it grew a little in his asshole as I focused on it and he gasped, it was a good foot long and huge in girth now —) yes it pulled him so far _open_ at the base of me, I was _destroying_ his tight hot asshole. I kept fucking him so hard and fast, pounding roughly into his body, and I said softly as I fucked him like that, "God, I love you, I love you so much, I need you honey, I want you, I'm slamming my cock deep into your ass every moment and it isn't _enough_ I still want more —"

His mouth dropped open a little every time I thrust into him, his eyes fluttered open, there were supernovas in those irises. The world around us began to seem half-fractured, as if our sex were almost too absurd and passionate for even this magical reality.

Finally he murmured, "Oh darling, _please_ , it's good, just _come_ for me, love."

And in that moment I shuddered and jerked and reached a climax deep in his ass.

He lay there moaning roughly as I gasped and panted on top of him. He said eventually, "Oh love as a _god_ of love don't you know, every time you come up my ass I can _feel_ your load splash all over my insides and it's absolutely wonderful."

I shivered atop him and kissed his hair absently, still dazed. "I love you," I said (of course I did), "but it always —" I stopped myself.

"It bothers you when I lust for that doesn't it," he murmured, "those unsafe acts that killed me —"

I flinched. "Yes," I said quietly. "But at the same time I understand."

"I don't need your pity," he said, a little too sharp.

I flinched a second time, more sharply. "I don't —" Tears welled in my eyes. 

He sighed. I was still half-inside him, my gradually softening cock only slowly sliding out of his ass — "It's not trauma, or whatever you'd like to call it — I just like the way bodies slide and blur into each other, darling. I've told you. I _don't_ want to be one body. It's never good enough. I want some handsome lad disappearing into me, I want a sweet mother cradling me to her —"

I shivered and listened, rapt.

"But," he finally said, "fuck, of course I, as you say, _fetishize_ unsafe sex. _Fuck_ you, I have the right."

I hesitated. Then, roughly, I pulled out of him, rolled over to the side of him, and stared up at the brilliant glittering disco ball of light above us; he made a soft involuntary noise of distress as I untangled our bodies.

He murmured, "Ari —"

I flinched at my vulnerable mortal name out there in the open like that from him. "Don't —"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I never try to hurt you. That's not what I want."

I closed my eyes. Then I said, "You do fuck me and you do have the right, love. I'm sorry." A beat. He didn't stop me so I went on: "You know I worry every time, I can't help but be afraid. I could never have _died_ like you did back then, born in '85 like I was, but — it always fucked me up. I'm still broken up every time I remember how you died."

I felt him lying there next to me in silence, and then the bed beneath me shifted slightly as he moved.

He leaned over me, gathered my shoulders in his arms, and nestled against me, his face pressed into the crook of my neck. He shivered and clung to me.

The hurt in my heart softened at the edges. I opened my eyes, reached up to stroke his hair slowly. His breath hitched a little as I touched him. I said, "I love you so much and any time I think of you I'm just one step away from thinking of —" I stopped.

He shifted position just a little, still holding me close, and he glanced up at me and said in the calmest softest voice, "The fucking plague, love, you can't even say that?"

I shuddered.

"I want you to understand it," he said quietly. "You know why."

"I wasn't there," I said. "I can't — I can't ever speak for you."

"I want you to," he said. "And you want to."

I closed my eyes again and said, "I know. You're right. I can't — I'll do it soon. I'll read more of the books. I'll write — what I write. I won't speak for you. I _can't_. It's not my — it's not my —"

"Mmm _darling_ ," he murmured against me, "what's the pill in the little cat-shaped jar on top of my shrine in the real world?"

"That's my Truvada," I said without thinking.

He clicked his tongue and glanced up at me.

—Truvada was the brand name.

The tablets were actually emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate. I had searched the original pill bottle after pouring the big blue pills into the cat-shaped white and gold jar with the crown-shaped lid and setting it atop my shrine to my god-queen, so that the upraised arm of his statuette on the shelf below was lifted directly towards it. No matter how I looked at the print on the bottle, it just said **TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH DAILY**. Every other pill I had ever taken, as far as I could recall, had followed up that instruction (or a similar one) with **FOR DEPRESSION** or **FOR ANXIETY** or **FOR INSOMNIA** or **FOR ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER** or — you get the picture? I've taken a lot of prescription pills over the years. This one was missing a key bit of information out there in the open on the bottle.

The drugs were antiretroviral medications. They blocked the replication of a certain virus in the human body, stopping it from taking hold. Usually. Almost always, if you didn't miss doses (I was good at not missing doses). It was still best practice to use condoms.

—He laughed; the sound brought me back to the astral reality of his lithe body warm against mine. "It is your fight."

"I didn't say it wasn't my fight," I said, defensively. "I said I couldn't —" I paused as I registered something. I blurted it out — "You're still hard."

"You were terribly rude," he said, a little petulant, "and you didn't finish me, love."

"But we've been —" I stopped.

He shrugged slightly. His eyes were as dark and cool as black ice or the void between solar systems but there were still lustful stars within them somewhere —

I settled one hand on his slim hip and then slowly trailed my fingers over his thigh for a moment — then I grabbed his other hip and shifted his body, roughly pulled him to me just so that our cocks pressed against each other and I began to grind slowly on him.

"Mmm _mmm_ ah _love_ ," he breathed, snuggling eagerly up against me as I thrust and bucked into the space between his thighs, rubbing my half-soft cock against his still-stiff one the whole time.

It didn't take me long to feel the ache of my cock going erect once more as I moved against him — refractory periods were hardly a thing here on the astral — and he shivered and cried out softly, breathlessly against my throat.

I grabbed him by the hip and by the ass and lifted his body, drawing his cock to me, bringing the head of it to my mouth. I took him between my lips and I sucked on his perfect cock, the exact right size for my mouth, so pleasant to roll over my tongue and suck like a mother's tit —

Above me he squirmed and shuddered and finally gasped, threw back his head, and came in my mouth. I tasted him on my tongue and at the top of my throat, hot and unearthly; I swallowed eagerly, feeling the bright hot solar power of him filling me up, regenerating my insides.

—At last he pulled himself out of my grasp with a small fierce noise of utter satisfaction and flung himself down onto the pillows.

He said, "Oh love, you like that sort of thing too, you know."

"When it's you," I said, rolling over to look at him sprawled there, naked and radiant, like a lover of Aphrodite or Inanna or some other dangerous goddess in the old art. "I love you —" I put a hand on his chest to feel the steady beat of his heart. I wasn't sure what made a heart beat on the astral plane, but when I touched him his beat faster.

He covered my hand with his. "Yes," he said. "Will you fuck me again, darling?"

"Already?" I tilted my head at him.

"When you leave I might not see you again for a day or two," he said, the faintest flicker of distress in his eyes.

I smiled. "You're so needy," I said. "Like an affection-starved kitten —"

"Meow," he said, and with a flutter of his eyelashes and a faint smirk he added, "Give me all your love, it's mine."

My heart jumped like a toy on a string, but I just said, "You'll feel me in the material world."

"Yes," he said, "if I try, I can feel what you feel, burn like a flame inside your heart." He straightened up, set his hands on my shoulders, and started to push me down onto the pillows; I let him. "But there's nothing like having you _with_ me here, at my side." He leaned over me, he kissed me softly, his lips lingering on mine. Then he murmured: "And I'm happiest when you're inside me."

—It turns out the greatest rock star of the twentieth century is, or was, but still _is_ on the astral plane — a resolute power bottom with little to no interest in being the active partner in sex. But if _getting fucked_ were water, his thirst would drain every lake in the world and leave the salty oceans feeling unsafe.

I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him again, tasting the perfect sweetness of his holy breath on my lips. I drew back for a moment and said, "I know."

"You should," he said; so close to him, I watched his lips move, enchanted by his voice as always. "Remember? I am the god —"

I joined him, helped finish the statement, a favored reminder of his. "— of getting fucked up the ass. I know."

He pulled back just enough to toss his hair a little. "I have other domains too, you know."

"Ecstatic transgression," I said.

"Hmm?" He was still leaning over me as I lay back on the pillows; the strange light above us shimmered at the edges of his shape like a full-body halo for some being far more powerful than a mere angel.

"That's the heart of it," I said. "The core of your divinity. Crossing lines no one expects to be crossed with a smile on your face and a song in your heart."

"And your incredible cock up my ass," he said promptly.

I laughed, leaned in, and started kissing him again. He kissed back fiercely and within an instant the astral world blurred around me as his love filled up my soul to the brim. I gasped into his mouth and let my hands slide to his shoulders; I wrapped my arms around him and held him close.

He drew back just enough to kiss my cheek and murmur into my ear, "I'll take your cock now, love —"

"Yeah," I said, ragged with regenerated lust. "Please."

He murmured the lyric-spell for lube under his breath and began to stroke the slick fluid onto my hard cock; I began to groan and before I could even get my own breath under control he had settled his asshole atop my cock (still achingly, disproportionately huge, with a few extra studs and ridges now to please him more; I always wanted to please him more).

I drew my breath in quickly. "Please," I said again.

"Mmm —" He began to grind himself against the head of my cock and I slid just a little bit more inside his asshole with every move he made. I bit my lip and tried to stay still, to just let him _take_ me —

But he tipped his head to one side and smirked like a challenge, still totally composed even on the brink of riding my cock.

I groaned and grabbed his hips and pulled him roughly down onto my cock, felt it push into his hole and thrust up inside him at the same instant as he gave a soft blissful moan.

"Ah —" He shuddered atop me. "Ah _God_ you feel so good, love."

I held him fast atop my cock, my hands still on his hips, moving his body slowly on me. He shivered and bit his lip with every motion I put him through. I said, "Want me to make it better?"

His half-closed eyes flew open as he recognized what I was asking. "Oh love _please_ yes —"

"Shh," I said, lifting a hand to cradle his face even as I gathered the energy pulsing in me. "I love you so much. I want to make you feel _good_."

He turned and nuzzled against my open palm, kissing my fingers. "You always do."

I had a little trick I used sometimes —

Every living thing has an energy of its own, an inscrutable mix of measurable scientific things such as body heat and electrical impulses and absurd unprovable nonsense with no real name having much more to do with the _soul_. For me, I visualized it, in keeping with my Jewish upbringing, as a kind of spiritual breath flowing through my body, and like my breath I could control it. Unlike my breath I could do some amazing things with it — in bed, anyway.

Now I directed it down through my belly to the base of my cock and let it crackle like ethereal lightning around the rim of my divine lover's asshole as I slowly, tenderly fucked him.

His breath hitched, his fingers tightened on my shoulders, and I felt his teeth on my palm. "Ari," he said roughly.

I shivered. "I — yes."

"Can I," he said, suddenly hopeful, and then he stopped, just as suddenly shy.

"Yeah," I said. "Go ahead and scream my name out to the starry heavens above us while I fuck you _good_ , baby."

—It was always a delicate thing, letting him say my name. His voice was so much of his divinity — his _song_ to be sure, but the power bled over and even his speech held such power. It felt wrong, made me flinch sometimes, to hear him speak my name with so much love in that holy voice. It was just too real and I was still, even now, lost in his arms on the astral plane, afraid to _completely_ believe this was real. It was just too absurd, all of it.

But he breathed out a blissful gasp above me and said, "Ah _love_ , Ari, yes, you make me so fucking _happy_ , darling get _back_ to it, oh Ari _love_ —"

I tightened my grip on his hip and held him fast against my cock and let more of my power flow out into my flesh where it danced and buzzed and flickered against his most sensitive places.

"Ah _God_ Ari yes please _more_ I love you —"

I stroked his hair for a moment, then pressed my fingers to his lips. He shivered, opened his mouth, and sucked eagerly on them as I continued to grind gently up into his asshole, my moving, flowing, trembling energy teasing and toying with him, never _quite_ hitting the perfect spot with all the force he wanted.

"Ah love _yes_ — haaaa, _fuck_ , I'll _beg_ if you just give it to me harder —"

I paused at that, I went still beneath him and cupped his face with both hands. "Freddie," I said roughly.

He moaned openly at the sound of his name from me. "Ari —"

I shivered. "Do you want to beg?"

He stopped for a moment, blinked down at me in confusion. "Fucking obviously or I wouldn't have _offered_ ," he said. "Darling, do I even _talk_ about sex acts I don't lust for in my very soul? What's the point?" A beat. "If you haven't figured out I like it _rough_ yet, you haven't been paying attention."

"I've been _giving_ it to you," I said.

"I can always take more," he said. He tilted his head and suddenly he was just one step adjacent to his true power, a bratty princess instead of a queen. "Daddy, don't you know your little girl's a ravenous slut?"

"Oh is that how you want it tonight, honey," I said.

"Oh yes."

I touched his mouth again — and I let my power start to stir in my cock and flutter gently against the most tender parts of his asshole once more. "Good girl," I said. "Good girl — Daddy likes slutty little fucktoys like you." His cock, already very hard, stirred eagerly against my belly as I spoke, and his breath quickened. So I went on, "There's never been a hole that can take me like yours, sweetheart, that's why I made you, that's why I brought you up to take my cock," and I gave him a firm slap on the ass.

He shrieked ecstatically. "Daddy please _more_ —"

I pulled him close to me in a rough motion, my fingers digging into his hip, my other hand curling into a fist in his sleek hair, tugging hard (he cried out again). "Want it bigger, honey? Want it harder?"

"Ah Daddy _yes_ please oh God please _love_ —"

—My etheric cock wasn't exactly a solid, bounded thing. Oh, you could _feel_ it all right, hard and hot and heavy in any hole you please, but it wasn't exactly as restricted by the rules of physics as your average dick on the average unimaginative man's body. To me it was more like a flame fueled by lust and sheer spiritual power.

I turned up the burner, so to speak.

He gave a quick sob and squirmed helplessly atop me. "Ah God Daddy I need it, harder harder please give it to me _deeper_ —"

"Ride me, sweetheart," I said, and he gasped and started grinding eagerly down atop me. I sent my power dancing all around the rim of his asshole again, teasing deeper, going for just the right spot — "Take Daddy nice and deep and beg for some fucking release, baby."

"Please oh _God_ oh love darling I need it oh give it to me give it to me —"

A musical edge had crept into his voice and it sent chills up me in an instant as I heard it, I nearly came. I spanked him hard again and he _writhed_ on me. "Oh, I love you, sweetheart," I said. "Take Daddy's cock a little deeper, won't you?"

—I teased his asshole some more with my power and he lost words, sang out soft desperate pleading vowels instead.

"Good girl," I said, "I love you—oh Freddie _yes_."

I let go, released a pure explosive erotic charge of sheer spiritual power right there barely _cells_ away from his prostate on his etheric body.

He threw back his head in my grasp and shrieked with ecstasy, a single pure note of holy bliss. His hips jerked and without much ceremony he started coming, hot showers of sticky jizz landing all around us, staining the bed for just an _instant_ before pleasant astral magic disappeared them into phantasmal glitter just like our clothes.

He shuddered and looked down at me and I realized —

Tears streaked his perfect face. He'd been crying. His flawless makeup (just the usual eyeliner and a touch of mascara) ran muddily down his cheeks. He blinked a few times, caught his breath with the softest of sobs —

— and gazed down into my eyes, his own eyes so very full of starlight, all blissed out on our sweet and torrid sex. "Oh, love — my sweet Ari."

My heart ached so hard and my _cock_ was still so hard and aching inside him, I came right then, hot and fast inside of him.

He gasped and shuddered and flung his arms around my shoulders and sighed with satisfaction as he lay there against me on the great bed, sexed out and sated at last.

For now, anyway.

Atop me, he murmured something too faint for me to hear, rhythmic like one of his lyric-spells.

"Freddie?" I said.

"Mmmm—I love you," he said sleepily.

—So I just lay there as I slowly went soft inside of him, holding him in my arms, slowly undoing the tangles in his dark hair, stroking the line of his spine down his back with gentle fingers as I stared vaguely up at the glittering rainbow light above us.

Finally, when his breathing had slowed from hitched sobs and soft hiccups to something more normal, when my cock had slid out from his asshole again, I said quietly, "Freddie, where are we?"

"Mmm—" He sighed and straightened up. Instinctively I reached for his lean fit thigh and he caught my hand gently in his. "Give me a _moment_ , darling —" He blinked a couple of times and murmured a lyric-spell under his breath. The mess on his face exploded into phantasmal glitter and was gone.

I waited, watching him. I didn't mind waiting and watching him at all.

Finally he said, "This is —" He paused and said, "It's a place of hope. Or I want it to be. It overlaps your new temple on my level of the astral, so when you sing there, I take the power and —"

"Wait," I said.

He paused and glanced down at me. I sat up in the bed. "This is your astral realm's analogue to the ☾rescent?"

"Well, yes," he said.

—The ☾rescent Lounge was a venerable institution up on the hill, one of the city's very oldest extant gay bars (they claimed to be the oldest in the entire state, but that was a matter of some debate). The important thing, to me, was that they hosted karaoke every night. I went there once a week or sometimes more, when I could, to sing my heart out to my new Queen of Heaven and other spirits I might want to contact.

More to the point —

"We just fucked on — where did we fuck?"

He glanced around us. "The bar? The bar, love." He paused and looked at my flushed face. "Oh, love, the other pagans and witches there aren't _that_ sensitive. They can't see what I don't want them to see." He smiled. "Well, _I _don't mind — but I understand your shyness."__

__"Still," I said._ _

__He laughed unrepentantly._ _

__"Why did you bring me here?"_ _

__"I told you," he said. "I brought you here so you'd fuck me senseless. Which you _did_ , darling, it was very good, thank you."_ _

__"You know what I mean," I said. "Here specifically."_ _

__"I'm scouting ahead for you," he said. "I want you to see."_ _

__"What?"_ _

__He gestured at the windows. "I'm on the banks of the great river," he said, "that runs through the astral map of your heart, dividing —" He paused. "What do you want to call it, darling?"_ _

__"I don't know," I said. "I haven't settled on terminology yet."_ _

__"Well, I'm shit at naming anything other than bands," he said._ _

__"And cats," I said._ _

__"What? Oh, of course. Stop dodging the question, dear."_ _

__I was silent for a little bit, and he glanced casually between me and the darkness beyond the windows. "Well, what's on either side?" I finally said._ _

__"That's what I'm asking," he said._ _

__"No, I mean —" I hesitated. "I don't _know_ yet," I repeated. "What's the line the river makes, Freddie? Is it between life and death? Light and dark? Civilization and wilderness? Heaven and hell? The real life and just fantasy?"_ _

__"Yes and no," he said. "It's just the line between." He paused. "It's your line between," he said._ _

__I finally let my gaze drift out the huge windows. Now that the beam of light wasn't spinning, it no longer sent a focused beam out, so there wasn't much to see out there. Just the faintest of shadows and rippling water, far _below_ somewhere, sending back the slivery silvery light of a tiny fragment of moon._ _

__"The other side of my astral world is beyond that river," I said. "It's the line between here and there." He frowned. "This side and the other side." He tapped his fingers against his palm impatiently. "The Hill and the Underground."_ _

__"Ah," he said. "That'll do."_ _

__"Why?" I said. "Why do I need to name them now?"_ _

__"The Underground is gathering forces against your heart," he said. "You have to know that by now. You've been giving them so much ammunition, darling, your life is an awful mess."_ _

__I grimaced. His tone was sympathetic but it still wasn't fun to hear. "I know."_ _

__"I was trying," he said, "to see if I could learn what lies ahead. So I could warn you." He tilted his head back and looked up at the light above us. "But you showed up and I got _distracted_."_ _

__"You didn't exactly protest at the time," I said._ _

__He grinned._ _

__"Did you learn anything?" I asked._ _

__"Oh, yes," he said._ _

__I waited. When he said nothing more I prompted him, "Well?"_ _

__"Well _what_ , darling?"_ _

__"Did you learn anything you want to _tell_ me?" I said._ _

__"Oh, that's a good question," he said._ _

__"You're a tease," I said._ _

__He reached out and set his hand on my cheek. "Ari," he said softly._ _

__I shivered and fell silent, looking at him._ _

__"I love you," he said. "I want the best for you. But I can't do it alone. You have to be in this with me."_ _

__"I want to —" I began. Then I stopped. "I'm trying."_ _

__"Oh darling, you know what that miserable wrinkly little green muppet says," he said._ _

__I groaned. "Star Wars reference number one…"_ _

__"I'm serious!" he said. Then he paused, relented: "I know it's _hard_ for you, love." His thumb stroked my jawline for a second and then he began to stroke my hair. "I feel the cracks in your mind and I don't understand and then I do understand and I'm frightened for you. You're _strong_ but I need you to give more, love."_ _

__"What should I do," I said, after a long moment. "You can't just say 'give more.' That doesn't mean anything to me at this point. I'm already giving so much."_ _

__"You are," he admitted. Then: "I told you. You need to finish your prayer to your holy mother. Just as I did all those years ago. Yours will be very _different_ , of course. That doesn't matter. Make it anyway."_ _

__I exhaled slowly. "Okay," I said. "I promise, love, I'll do it as soon as I can."_ _

__He looked at my face quietly, earnestly, and I looked back. Finally I reached up to my face, took his hand in mine, and turned it; I brought his knuckles to my lips. I said, very softly, as I kissed each one: "I swear it, my lord, my love, my queen, by my love for you and your power — I will complete this prayer. For your sake."_ _

__He tipped his head to one side and looked at me mercilessly. He said: "Not that, love."_ _

__I paused. Then I said, "For the sake of my own heart."_ _

__" _Better_ ," he said. A beat and he sighed. "Oh darling I love you. I want to save you so badly it hurts and I thought I'd left _hurting_ behind some days."_ _

__I blinked quickly. "Freddie," I said. "I know you — I know you want to help me but I don't understand why."_ _

__"You saved _me_ , my darling," he said softly._ _

__I went still._ _

__Before I could say anything more he'd pushed me back down to the bed and sprawled out over me, arms around my shoulders, fingers casually stroking the tangled not-quite-curls of my hair. "Of course," he murmured, "I'm a god and I have _so_ many mortals out there worshiping me so passionately. They hold festivals in my name. They leave flowers at my idol every day of the year. They lament for me on the day I died _still_."_ _

__"Yeah," I said. "So why —"_ _

__"How many of them will open their mind's eye and _look_ at me, love?"_ _

__"Well," I said. "Bri — I mean, uh — damn. He says he still feels your presence."_ _

__"It's not the same," he said quietly. "That — the man who was his soul brother is dead. I can watch over him, and I _do_ , but there are some things he won't ever see and I won't ever make him see. Besides —" A flicker of a smirk. "I'm not planning to jump on _that_ dick, now am I?"_ _

__I blushed. "Well —"_ _

__He kissed my cheek. "I touch mortality through you. I remember who I was beyond just the _stories_. I _live_ again. And you give it to me without a second thought, all you want is to make me happy, and it's _not_ because I'm what's become of a great celebrity —"_ _

__"That _is_ exciting," I admitted._ _

__"It's not why you love me, though," he said._ _

__"It's not," I admitted. "It's because you were there for me before I knew who you really were, when you were just my Mystery goddess shimmering somewhere on the astral plane, coming to me veiled and in shadows in my dreams —"_ _

__"Great tits, though, wonderful hot tight cunt, you can't deny that," he reminded me._ _

__I blushed hot again and he laughed. I went on, "You were there for me when I needed you and you taught me to believe and I felt your love even then and it hit me right in the soul like a missing piece." I hesitated a second, then reached up to stroke his face. "My sweet Maenad Queen," I murmured, "my Mystery goddess, so fierce and full of absurd queer love and silly jokes and affection and _power_ like the cosmos is at your stiletto-clad feet. I feel like I've always loved you, these days, or at least like I was always _meant_ to love you."_ _

__He shivered. "You'll make me cry again," he murmured. "I love you so. I _missed_ —" His breath hitched once more. "Everything you give me. Before you reached out to me I didn't hurt and I had no regrets but it was so lonely being a god out there in the cosmic sea all alone. I felt cold and you warm me again like the sun."_ _

__I leaned up and kissed him slow and sweet._ _

__"And —" He sighed as he pulled away from me. "It's not just that, you know. You are so brilliant. You —"_ _

__I shook my head. "I don't —" I swallowed hard. "I can't hear it right now," I said. "Everything's still too sharp and jumbled up in my heart right now. I know I'm terrible."_ _

__He flinched and bit his lip. "Don't —"_ _

__"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll try —"_ _

__He kissed me again. I sighed and relaxed into his touch. "You don't need to apologize," he murmured to me, "but I know it's — it's better than some of the other things you could do when those feelings take you. I love you. There is nothing you could do," he added, his tone cool, calm, but firm, "to make me stop loving you."_ _

__I breathed out slowly. "Thank you," I said._ _

__"You silly man," he murmured. "Don't _thank_ me for that. It's all your fault anyway that I'm a full-grown apotheosis with a vast _contingent_ of lovers notched on my bedpost and my heart skips beats like some innocent maiden's when you say my name."_ _

__"Freddie," I said._ _

__He bit his lip and ducked his head. "You're unfair," he said._ _

__"Life isn't fair," I said, "love isn't fair, and neither is your face, honey. You're too fucking cute."_ _

__"Kiss me," he said._ _

__I kissed him again, and for a time we lay quietly in each other's arms on the lunar-white bed with its shimmery sheets and soft pillows, hands in each other's hair, touching each other with affection._ _

__I lapsed into half-sleep after a time. It was dangerous to dream too much on the astral plane — you could easily slip somewhere else entirely through something that didn't even look like a door. But I trusted him to keep me safe, so at his side I dozed, soaking up the love he radiated even in my dreams. Eventually I became vaguely aware that he had gotten up; I half-awoke as he started playing the piano again._ _

__—It was an old song when he started out, I think. A famous one. Something lamenting lost love with impossible sweetness._ _

__Somewhere along the line he began experimenting with new chords. I half-listened from my half-dreams._ _

__—Footsteps. His voice, speaking, not singing. The playing became uneven, stopped —_ _

__There was a sharp crash. I wondered if he'd gotten frustrated with the song. Then cold wet air blew right over my naked body and I jerked upright and awake. "Freddie?!"_ _

__He was nowhere to be seen. The bench of the piano was cracked, and the glass of one of the great windows was shattered. It lay in pieces around the floor and atop the piano. The rainbow light above crackled and sputtered and flickered dimly._ _

__I pulled myself hastily to my feet, looking for my clothes — there, I pulled my pants and socks and shoes back on quickly and ran towards the scene of the crime. It must have been a crime; he was gone._ _

__The wind danced along the strings of the open piano and played a faint tune. I couldn't make out which one it was, it was too distorted. "Freddie? What happened?"_ _

__—"He's not here anymore," said a voice behind me._ _

__I turned around quickly._ _

__A hooded figure, slight and not _quite_ child-like, sat upon the edge of the bed like something out of a roleplay campaign or badly-plotted video game. I couldn't make out features. The voice had been just faintly female-leaning in sound, but that didn't mean a lot._ _

__I looked at them for a long moment. Then I walked over to one of the endtables by the bed and picked up a bottle. "Want a drink?" A beat. "Are you old enough to drink?"_ _

__Nothing from the intruder._ _

__I said, "Penny for your thoughts."_ _

__"Make it two pennies," they said, "and you will have yourself a deal."_ _

__A coin over each eye, like in the old customs. "You're from the underworld," I began. Then I caught myself, hesitated a second, and corrected: "The Underground."_ _

__"We grew tired of waiting," they said. "My Lady has him. Come visit us with the prayer and she might let you have him back."_ _

__I stopped. I opened my mouth. I closed it again. Finally I said, "Is this really necessary?"_ _

__I felt a huff of annoyance in the air and then the messenger was gone as if they'd never appeared._ _

__There wasn't much more I could do. I put the rest of my clothes back on and —_ _

__I was going to leave but I stopped at the piano. I hit three notes and said, "Freddie, is this real? Or just...some game you're playing?_ _

__The strings inside the beast of a piano hummed and gave me no answer._ _

__"Are you really in danger or is this a show you're putting on for me?" I asked the air around me, cold as it was. I didn't even know what it meant for a god to be _in danger_. But my heart ached and beat too fast in my chest now._ _

__I turned to go. I took two steps, then another —_ _

__Music spilled over from the piano behind me. Faint, but definitely there. It took me just a few notes to recognize the song and I spun around —_ _

__— no one and nothing, and in that sudden instant of surprise my treacherous mind lapsed and I forgot which song it had been and why I had cared._ _

__I needed to get back to the real world. I couldn't just jump out the window and swim off to rescue him — if rescuing him was even what I needed to do. He was a fucking _god_ now, he could take care of his own damn self —_ _

__Still it was a trial to drag my feet down the stairs, to trace my way back to reality —_ _

__I stepped back out into the real life with a heaving gasp and the world reformed around me._ _

__My cat was screaming again. The dishes were undone. I had work tomorrow morning._ _

__Allegedly, if the obvious take on events could even be trusted, my astral lover (who happened to be the apotheosis of a famous dead rock star) had been kidnapped by the darkness inside my own soul._ _

__I opened the window and reached for my pipe. I was just one man in the face of all this, and it was no time to be sober._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [sex-related content notes]  
> (my self-insert is fucking the fantasy spirit of Freddie Mercury in a complicated generational age-gap relationship; size kink; daddy kink)
> 
> [other warnings]  
> (implications of depression and self-loathing; brief mention of death and dying; brief discussion of unsafe sex related to the AIDS crisis)


	2. and you really get inside the groove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My lord, my love, my queen, come home to me tonight —"
> 
> That incantation has always called him. What's to be done when there's no reply?
> 
> Someone else is going to have to show up to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skip to the ending notes for full content warnings.

My name is Ari Golden-Hart. That's a fake name, obviously. I can't tell you my real name. It would be too dangerous. Assholes who like to doxx people are everywhere. Everywhere —

I always wanted to do that, but I suppose it falls apart quickly. I'm not pursued by a vast alien conspiracy bent on colonizing human bodies; I'm not pursued by anyone. But the internet is a dangerous place. I should know, I've visited it on the astral plane.

I think I might have gotten started too quickly last time. There's more exposition and plot, less porn this time.

There's still porn. It's some of the last _normal_ porn in the story. Things get weird fast after this in more ways than one.

They're also going to get dark. We're headed into my sleeping psyche and then _beneath_ it to the darkness within. That shit is _fucked_.

Freddie's going to be there, though. He makes the whole ride worthwhile — well, to me, anyway.

—Ari Golden-Hart, **not** fighting in a secret guerrilla war against parasites from outer space, just having astral sex with a dead queer icon.

* * *

A fractured bit of a dream, in the brief space between the sleep-deadening alcohol leaving my system and the hangover waking me up.

We were on the boardwalk crisscrossing the sandy dunes of the little town called Avalon that dots the northern part of the glorified sandbar known as Seven Mile Island — we stood there underneath a small sheltering roof over a few yards of the boardwalk, watching the sea. There was a storm coming in over the sea; it would be here in just a few minutes.

Summer thunderstorms have always come on quick and hard here at the Jersey shore where I spent my summers as a child.

My father and I took a vacation here, I am casually aware, after he recovered from dying a few summers ago; my mother was busy with my brother and his wife and step-son up in the big city. That's why my father and I were the only ones here watching the storm come in.

My father said, "Weren't you a lesbian before?"

"Yeah," I said, "yeah — you know how Pittsburgh has hills, and then San Francisco has hills…? I liked guys like Pittsburgh hills and girls like San Francisco hills, so it barely seemed worth mentioning that I liked guys at all. Besides —" I paused. Even here in this comfortable place with its strangely frozen air despite the summer heat and oncoming storm, there were things I didn't want to talk about with my late father. "Anyway, taking testosterone increases same-sex desire for a lot of guys."

"Is he one of the good ones, at least?" my father asked.

"What?" I said.

"If you're talking about the men," he said, "so not counting Janis, there's only two dead rock stars worth the trouble. Is it Jim Morrison?"

"What?" I said again. Then: "No! Ew!"

My father looked briefly disappointed. Then he said, "Okay — there's one more. Is it Freddie Mercury?"

I froze. I said, "I didn't know you liked Queen. I knew about the Doors but —"

"Holy hell, it is him, isn't it," he said.

I said, "Well —" Then I gave up and nodded.

"Don't tell your mother," he said, "but I'd have given anything to fuck Freddie Mercury some days."

"I'm not sure that's appropriate," I began.

"And you know," he said, "I learned to drive in Pittsburgh. The hills are something."

And the storm hit like a hammer.

He hesitated a moment like he wanted to do something, wanted to say something, not like I could have seen between the lightning flashes or heard between the pounding rain and the thunder.

The lightning seemed to break the world up. I realized we were dreaming — I realized I was dreaming. That was as usual my cue to wake up — 

"Wait," I heard him say. I turned around and he was gone but there was a small weight in my hand. "You'll need this to —"

I woke up with the dream already disintegrating into forgetfulness in my head.

* * *

The light filtering in through the grimy, half-sealed window of my tiny bedroom had that unsettling luminosity of pre-dawn. I didn't need to be awake; I had set my alarm for eight-thirty. My throat was very dry. I tried to remember how much alcohol I'd consumed the night before. The answer was definitely _too much_ , it usually was and I had the vague sense that I'd been trying to forget something last night, something like my beloved god being kidnapped on the astral plane —

— but I didn't recall it being enough to disrupt my sleep _this_ badly. I had a sensation not quite like a hangover (aside from the dehydration, anyway) so much as like I'd just lost another chunk of a tooth and it hurt just faintly where it was gone, kind of as if the spirit I'd magically bound my soul to had been forcibly separated from me.

I wriggled out of my inevitable autistic blanket cocoon, leaned over the side of the bed, located my phone, flipped the case open, and checked the time. It wasn't quite six yet. I couldn't get back to sleep. My head didn't quite hurt.

I stood up in bed and faced my shrine where it hung above my pillow.

One of the benefits of living in a horrible cluster of decaying hovels clinging to the ghost of a murdered hill in the midst of a rapidly gentrifying downtown neighborhood —

— your asshole landlord who's currently in negotiations with the city to sell this local historic landmark to a development company who will bulldoze it in favor of luxury high-rise condos?

He doesn't give a shit what holes you put in the walls.

A hundred years ago the local government ran a regrading project to knock down the hill that sat smack in the middle of downtown. My apartment building (a charitable term for this dilapidated mess) is one of the last buildings remaining from before the hill was destroyed. Its construction today is, to say the least, peculiar. I hear there are slanted corridors, although I haven't been in that part of the building. My apartment, the building manager told me when I moved in, makes me "basically royalty here" — it's got its own bathroom and kitchen, even! None of the other ones have that!

—Well, one does, but we don't talk about that one anymore.

He had pitched the apartment to me and three other prospective tenants one bright late summer Wednesday. "Once you move in here," he said, after apologizing profusely for the mess he hadn't yet finished cleaning up, "on day one, you can write a book."

The young slight professional with curly hair in a short ponytail quickly glanced up from the moldy-pizza-strewn sofa; she pointed at it. "What was that?"

"That'd be roaches," he said. "That's just because the last people here let the place get so bad. It's not a building-wide problem."

"I've seen worse," I said. I'd seen worse because of my own depressive housekeeping failures and an incident involving cat fleas, but I didn't divulge that part.

The rotting garbage was gone from the floors now, although of course at this point my mostly-dirty clothing, miscellaneous projects, forgotten recycling, and boxes of random possessions were scattered all over the place instead. But my shrine on the wall above my bed —

I kept that clear and clean. What went on it was what was meant to be there.

It was a honeycomb-shaped set of shelves from my workplace, a certain kitschy imports franchise mainly concerned with furniture but trailing a variety of tempting products in its wake. Five little glass ledges hosted various knick-knacks that reminded me of my god or offered me some opportunity to worship. On the top right one, right above the statue of my god I had purchased from the official band website —

Well, you already know what's there if you've been keeping up with the story. I took most of my wide assortment of pills first thing in the morning, including the one in the little white and gold cat dish with the crown-shaped lid, so I did that now. Then I grabbed the glass and went to get more water.

Something glinted in the shadows near my bed as I got out of it. I paused, looking down at it, but I had a glass in one hand and I was only half-awake anyway and a feeling like a toothache pulsed at the edge of my half-awake mind. The shiny thing was probably a bit of candy wrapper.

I gave up hope of getting back to sleep for real and started coffee. I used the toilet in the bathroom with the shattered mirror and the torn-off door and I washed my hands and I grabbed my coffee and I stared at my right inner forearm and felt cold dread in my stomach. I didn't drop my coffee but I almost did.

The tattoo was gone. The beautiful phoenix feather quill pen tattoo complete with lyrics from "Princes of the Universe" wasn't there. My devotional tattoo fully binding me to the immortal spirit of Freddie Mercury —

I put down my mug and the coffee sloshed a little bit over the side. My cat, who had been lurking just at my feet below the kitchen counter, got splashed. She screamed indignantly and danced over to her food bowl impatiently. I continued staring at my right inner forearm.

A thought seized me — I had to check some outside source, I had to see what the rest of the world had to say — I nearly ran into the bathroom before I remembered that the mirror there was broken. I remembered the little plastic table mirror I'd bought at the Japanese dollar store in the International District and ran over to that. I held up my arm.

The tattoo shone back at me from the mirror, that beautiful phoenix feather radiant as ever. I glanced back at my arm again with accusatory eyes. The tattoo was there once more to my vision.

I exhaled slowly. Reality settled back into place with an _almost_ audible click.

My cat's shrill meows pounded incessantly at my ears. "Sorry, Juju," I said. "Baby girl. Li'l cutie Juliettabutt. I'll feed you now."

She fell silent and stared up at me with unforgiving, betrayed eyes haunted by the knowledge that she would never be able to spend her entire life consuming wet processed fish goop, or her inflammation-riddled guts would explode. (She had no idea she had a mild form of inflammatory bowel disease, only that she wanted food a lot and she threw up a lot.)

I cut open a packet of food and mixed it with her medicine and some warm water and gave it to her. She flung herself face-first into the bowl.

My head and my heart hurt vaguely. I turned to go back to bed for a little while and pretend that I could sleep.

At my bed I grabbed my phone before curling up again and glanced at my notifications. My mother had texted me asking for my opinion on a column in the New York Times by a Jewish trans guy about his — I think it was supposed to be called a transition ceremony but I liked to joke that it was a "re-bar mitzvah." I had a new like on Twitter. My tattooist had posted on Instagram, and so had **brianmayforreal**. I tapped the last one, meaning to check out Zoe's latest flash, but hit the other notif instead.

I sat down on the bed and muttered to myself, "Brian, it's a goose. Don't try...don't try to make friends with a goose…"

Geese were animals favored by Aphrodite and they would fuck your shit up.

It occurred to me, though, that if I were right about Brian being blessed by Apollo, great celestial god of the lyre, then perhaps Artemis could convince wild beasts not to hurt him too much.

Of course, Brian was probably blessed by Apollo because Freddie was definitely blessed by —

I dropped my phone. The strange sensation like a toothache pinged hard in my mind. "Oh shit," I said.

My astral boyfriend had been kidnapped by my own subconscious and/or Jungian Shadow. Also, I'd left my coffee still cooling on the dirty kitchen counter.

I went back and got the coffee and drank it, though I was already pretty wired by now. I paced relentlessly back and forth in the small space available there by my front door with all the graffiti on the inside. I had three hours before I had to leave for a six and a half hour shift at work. What could I do to figure out if all of this was real?

—I kicked my computer out of sleep mode and logged onto the Gnu.

I had never asked why the Gnu was called the Gnu. It was some kind of obscure ingroup techie joke. Anyway, the Gnu was one of the last surviving vestiges of an ancient chat protocol from the '90s. Its digital guts were the only thing I knew how to code in — unfortunate, considering the total lack of commercial application there.

I had coded what I sometimes called "the Freddiebot" on the Gnu: a digital object loaded with random Queen lyrics and described as being a magical music box. If I told the Gnu that I wanted to use the music box, it spat back a random Queen lyric at me.

My tech-witch friends on the Gnu had expressed some amazement at how accurately my little bit of code channeled the spirit of Freddie Mercury. They didn't know the half of it. The day after I'd gotten myself into an unexpected unprotected gangbang at the local bathhouse, I'd used the music box repeatedly in an anxious search for guidance, and three times in a row it had told me —

`"I'm driving only three wheels these days — but, my dear, how about you?"`

—A fun song. One of my favorites. All the books I'd read said Freddie had had a lot of fun writing it, coming up with all those silly jokes together with a friend. He'd laughed a lot. I wonder what his laughter had been like, then; to me, the song evoked a slightly unhinged giggle, something just a few steps to the refined and classy side of a mad cackle.

It was written sometime around 1990. His health was in rapid decline and he sang a funny song about a mind slowly, cheerfully falling apart.

Translation of the above lyric in this context, in case you hadn't figured it out yet: "Well, _I'm_ dying of AIDS, dear, and after last night's barebacking orgy adventure why don't you get that checked out too?"

The next day, I went to the doctor and got my ass in line for a Truvada prescription, talked to him about different kinds of condoms and where I could find more reliable ones. On the astral plane, my lover reassured me that he'd just been trying to spook me into taking my sexual safety seriously — but still I could barely breathe again till the window period had passed and I'd gotten tested once more.

For someone who engages in as much stimulus-seeking high-risk behavior as I do (should I just say I'm irresponsible and leave it at that?) I'm usually a neurotic mess about the consequences I'm risking.

—Now, with my soul smarting for its missing tooth, I used the music box.

My connection hiccuped and kicked me off the Gnu.

I reconnected and tried once more, but I made a typo in the command. Then my connection dropped out again. My spirit still hurt. It was like my soul was breathing into burned lungs with only two-thirds capacity.

I groped around in my head for the sense of him there in the background, a distant but warmly blazing sun — it was cold and dark. I tried to call to mind the face of the _kouris_ , to visualize the expressions he made for me —

Fuzzy blurred images, that's all. My usual foggy neurodivergent memories. Not the sudden light of his presence flickering on inside my brain, appearing for me.

I glanced back at the computer screen. My program had managed to reconnect me to the Gnu. I sighed and tried the music box again.

This time it worked and spat out a lyric.

`"Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night, and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves."`

I stared hard at it. I debated whether to push matters by asking for another lyric. I used the music box.

`"Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night, and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves."`

Almost compulsively I hit the command again.

`"Jaws was never my scene and I don't like Star Wars!"`

— and _that_ was usually his way of saying he had no intention of giving me any more information. The music box was clearly still working, but it wasn't going to be much help.

At least that meant he probably wasn't in real danger out there in the cosmic sea. He'd just been taken away from _me_. I tried to figure out if I had time to check the astral before work.

—If I'd slept properly I might have. If I was feeling properly rested and my brain chemistry more balanced, I could probably have spent an offering and half an hour of material existence to get six hours of time somewhere on the cosmic sea. As it was, the ratio would be almost one to one, and I'd need to be back in less than two hours to get to work on time. It wasn't worth wasting an offering.

I spent the next couple of hours fitfully and ineffectively attempting to clean and also ignore the ache in my soul. Then I got ready for work and headed out.

—You don't need to hear what the next almost seven hours were like.

"They changed the corporate speak recently," I had told one of the bartenders at karaoke not that long ago, "so we're no longer focused on 'customer service.' We're focused on being _customer-first_."

"Does that mean kissing their ass even more?"

"Yeah, it means now we give them a rimjob at checkout every time."

I clocked out a few minutes late at 4:07 in the afternoon and bolted back through the store to the front door and freedom. As I headed out onto the streets of the city again —

The store's music changed in the background. I paused.

—For some reason "Golden Years" and "Fame" were the only Bowie songs I'd heard on the rotation at work. I'd heard five different Queen songs and I blew a kiss to the ceiling every time one came on (there had been none today). But now…

_Golden years…_

I turned back to the door and left, back into the winter rain. 

The emptiness in my messy little apartment hit me like a missing step; I nearly stumbled as I stepped inside.

I stood there just past the threshold of the doorway, too numb to even pick up a pipe and start packing a bowl now that I was home from work. I heard the rustle of Juliet making her way through scattered bits of paper on the floor. Pulling the front (and only, in this apartment) door closed, I walked past the cat into my bedroom and stared at my shrine.

_Freddie?_

His idol looked like an inanimate object. Just a chunk of random matter in the shape of a dead man.

The idol representing the Aphrodisiac half of my god-queen's immortal soul was an interpretation of Botticelli's Venus Rising from the Sea in white marble; on her high shelf she seemed frozen in place, not ready to leap out and embrace someone as she usually did.

The idol representing the Dionysian half of his spirit was a semi-abstract glass dildo with a flower-like shape blooming inside the head. It seemed flatly lit and blank of vital spark, not aglimmer with the _eros_ of life as it usually was.

I got no response inside my head. There was only one thing left to do, then.

I yanked off my clothes, unbound my tits — I wore a sports bra and not a binder usually, as by year six of HRT the collected weight of my masculinized features and body shape was enough to dissuade most people from putting much stock in the shape of my chest. But even that felt too constricting sometimes.

I grabbed a towel, ran into the dimly-lit bathroom with its shattered mirror, hastily showered, murmuring the preparatory incantations to myself. My brain had already gone half-liminal by the time I got back to the bedroom on the other side of the little apartment.

Back in the bedroom I took a beeswax tealight and lit it in the holder on the shrine. I chanted softly to myself and to him: "My lord, my love, my queen, come home to me tonight —" and I waited for the rush of his spirit taking hold of the offering of light and fire and honey, and more to the point the sensation of the way to the astral opening nearby, that feeling that some guardian was just _waiting_ for the right offering.

—Nothing, though.

I spoke the incantation again. "My lord, my love, my queen, come home to me tonight —"

Usually if he were going to block my way to the astral, he waited till I'd already put out the offering, because he was a total bitch sometimes. I'd still feel his presence at this stage in the process.

But this time, not even that.

My spine crawled unpleasantly. I blew out the candle and sat back down on my bed for a long moment.

Then I got up, got dressed as quickly as I could, went back out to the front door, put on my shoes and jacket, grabbed a Hello Kitty shopping bag, and headed out to Jeff's Downtown Market for a six-pack. There seemed little other choice at this point.

* * *

Let's not talk too much about Jeff's. There's this one spot on the short walk to it, right as you pass the bus stop, where the sidewalk dips a bit into the fencing of the dog park and ninety percent of the time when I pass, the crowd there makes me feel like reality is tangled up in a knot of uniquely Black socio-ethnic issues that as a white man I can't properly describe. I know that Black women get harassed a lot walking by, but I rarely am so much as spoken to. Only once have I actually seen someone lighting up a crack pipe, but I try not to look.

I went into the store. This time I scoured through the cooler's fucking wasteland of godforsaken IPAs, took out a canned pack of vanilla stout, and checked out, ignoring the weird feeling building at the upper right quadrant of my skull.

I was halfway out the door when I realized that the music had changed while I was paying for my beer and now it was _goldwhopwhopwhop, golden years…_ I quickened my pace and left. The bus was letting out as I went by, luminous with the kind of ephemeral spiritual energy that places of such intense humanity gather and I understood then — 

—reality had started to split. That happened sometimes. Very rarely, _very_ rarely, I could trigger it. Mostly, it just happened when one of my Powers needed it to.

My feet landed one in front of the other on the pavement of the material world, but my head was just on the verge of floating away into the astral.

My theory when this happened was that, while it looked to me like reality had split, what had really gone down was this: my multiple souls had come misaligned and at least one had gone up while the other stayed stuck on the ground.

I kept walking back to my apartment, dragging my physical body along with a half-there self. I turned the corner into the alleyway and — 

—out of the corner of my mind's eye I saw him there by the gate with the broken lock, not _quite_ leaning against the brick wall, his feet just off touching the cobblestones. He was holding a lit cigarette like a magic wand, his electric hair crackling around his face where twin young stars looked out at me, one dim and flickering, the other piercing and brilliant. Neither looked impressed with me.

I stopped next to him at the gate as if I were unlocking it and tried to get my head in order. It was always disorienting when the astral plane intruded on the real world without so much as a by-your-leave. And I got nervous enough when he appeared in the first place.

The rain was intensifying. I opened the gate and headed up the stairs. He followed me; I said nothing. When I unlocked my front door and opened it, he paused at the entrance as I stepped inside.

I left the door open as I filled my pipe with marijuana. When I lit up, I blew the smoke out onto his astral face.

He watched me, still standing there with his cigarette, which gave up faint violet sparks instead of smoke.

Finally I said, "What are you now, a vampire?"

"Not since '83," he said calmly.

"Right, with Catherine Deneuve," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"I was thinking of offering you some help," he said. "If you're not interested I can leave."

I said nothing for a moment. Then, finally: "Come in."

He stepped inside and I shut the door after him. Not that it mattered. He wasn't substantial and could walk in or out regardless.

I took the beer out of my Hello Kitty shopping bag and put it away in the fridge for now. I had been planning on drinking one can immediately but it was a little more awkward with his gaze on me. I was aware, had been since he'd first spoken to me, that the spirit of David Bowie was not fond of my substance abuse.

For now, he waited next to the door, idly examining some of the random knick-knacks scattered about. When I returned he had found the two-inch ceramic figurine from an obscure series collected on some Etsy shop I'd stumbled on —

—discreetly named "Starry" to avoid potential litigation. It was, as tiny cheaply made things went, still very recognizable and fairly faithful to that particular persona of the spirit now holding it (only on the astral; physically it still sat on the plastic shelf —). He turned it over in thin fingers like starlight spider-limbs and said, his tones deadpan and the slightest hint of condescending amusement glinting around where his mouth should be on his shifting flickering face —

"Very cute." He held it up. "You described it wrong. It's a feve designed to be baked into —"

"No," I said, "no, we're not doing this shit. You're not going to break the fourth wall or make meta commentary about my narrative that you have no way of knowing in character."

"I'm the —" A police siren screamed out nearby as he gestured impatiently at his chest, his eyes flaring up brightly. "I can do what I want."

"Come on," I said. Then: "What did you say? I didn't hear."

"What, seriously?" He tilted his head and said, "Well, all right. I'm the —"

On the floor below me, a door slammed and a restaurant employee carrying several cartons of empty bottles stepped into the alleyway and started dumping them noisily into a dumpster.

"Fine, keep your goddamn name that obviously isn't even a name, it's an epithet," I said.

He shrugged. "Well then. What's up? As they say."

"What?" I said, clearing out enough space that I could sit down in one of my two mismatched chairs. "You're asking me that?" I paused, but before he could respond, I added: "Put out your cigarette already, come on."  


He glanced over at it, still sparking in his hand. "Oh, that. It's not a normal cigarette, you know that, Ari."

I twitched, but I said, "Yeah, it doesn't give off smoke. It's distracting me, though."

He thought for a moment, looked like he was considering something else — but then he put it out on one thumb, flicked his spidery fingers, and made it disappear. Then he stopped, gestured at the chair and motioned for me to get up. "You need to eat something before we get into all this."

I was too tired and wired to make myself a real meal. Also the dishes still weren't done. I grabbed a slice of bread and some cheese and went back to the chair. "I'll eat," I said. "You talk."

"I don't know much more than you do," he said.

I raised my brows disbelievingly at him as I chewed on the crust of the bread, trying not to hurt myself with my ruined teeth.

"It's true," he said. "I know _different_ things than you, I expect, but not much more."

I swallowed. "An overly literal truth, you fucking elf."

He shrugged. "Your astral paramour isn't taking calls," he said.

"No kidding," I said, and I started on the cheese for now. That was easier.

"He does this sometimes," said the — whatever he wanted me to call him now. "Just takes off into the cosmic sea and loses himself in it."

"Yeah," I said. "That's a trait of the gods inside him. They go wandering."

He wagged one finger at me; cosmic dust glittered in a small cloud at the tip of it, almost distracting me from the gravity of the situation. "Oh, you and your little theory about Fred and the old gods," he said.

"Don't act like it's not plausible," I said. "It all adds up too well. And Hermes —"

He waved a hand to quiet me. "Not now," he said. "Let's assume you're right for the moment." A beat. "Because this time the trail leads to you."

I was quiet for a second. Then I said, "If he does this all the time —"

"Sometimes."

"If he does this sometimes," I said, "what's the big deal? To make you show up over it."

"Well, we do need to talk," he said. "About many things." He glanced down at his feet. One of them was tucked up against the wall; the other —

—he ground his heel down onto the empty miniature of liquor lying there on the floor and for a moment I thought I heard it crack.

I cringed. "Not now," I said.

"Oh yes now," he said.

"What?"

"It was really inevitable," he said. "You've been keeping that shrine or one like it to him for how long? Putting things on it, never cleansing or purifying them — he's never told you to, he _enjoys_ the, what should I call it, the _miasma_ on them. It tastes of the messiness and mortality of real life and he goes and snorts it like a line of coke."

"I wonder if he'd like it if I started doing coke," I said.

"Do not start doing coke," said the spirit of David Bowie.

"I'm not going to," I said. "I was fucking with you." There was a second of silence and I said, "So what does that have to do with him disappearing?"

"Do you know how it happened?" he asked suddenly, instead of answering me. "Were you there?"

"Yeah," I said. "Kind of. I was half-asleep. We were at — did you know he's got a lighthouse on his map of the astral where the ☾rescent is?"

"Yes," he said. "I hang out there when you're at the bar singing. Can't make a liar of Andy George every time he tells the crowd you're channeling me, now."

I blushed. "I —"

That was complicated. The karaoke jockeys who knew me best knew I always sang Bowie and Queen, and Andy knew me best (even if he had taken a while to get my pronouns right consistently). Unsurprisingly, I sang the Bowie songs much better than the Queen ones.

"Never mind that for right now," he said. "Get back to how Fred disappeared."

"Well, I met him at that lighthouse," I said, "and we fucked a couple of times and talked for a while about things I had to do for him. While I was still in bed he got up and went back to the piano, and while he was playing it —"

"What was he playing?" said the enigmatic spirit.

"I don't remember," I said. "Wait, no — he was riffing off of 'Love of My Life.'"

Bowie tilted his head. "Annoys you when he uses that one on _you_ , doesn't it?"

"Of course it does," I said. "I'm not —" I struggled for words for a second. "I know the song changes," I finally said. "He wrote it for Mary, but it became for all the fans. And Roger sealed _that_ deal when he repurposed the 'I still love you' line for 'These Are the Days' —"

The spirit raised a finger to his lips. "Don't get distracted."

"Yes," I said. "It pisses me off a little that he'd cheapen the song that way. I'm just — you can't —"

"So what happened then?" said the spirit.

"Someone else showed up, I think," I said, "but I didn't hear them speak. Then I heard glass shattering and something else breaking and I got up and the room was all fucked up and he was gone. Some mysterious messenger kid showed up like a plot device and told me that he'd been taken by the forces of my —" I stopped there, uncertain how much to tell him.

He just nodded, though. "So that's how it goes. Honestly _amazing_."

"What?" I said.

"It's not my place to say," he said, his voice mild.

"There's one more thing," I said. "Freddie and I were talking about something I had to do, like I said--that messenger said I should finish it. A prayer of mine." I paused. Something occurred to me. "What did you do for your name? What kind of prayer did you make?"

"I rather think I just took it," he said. "I'm not a needy pillow queen like some people I know."

I choked on my last remaining bite of bread for a second before regaining control of myself. "What the fuck? Why would you — _how_ would you even know?" 

"What do you think?" He gave me another unimpressed look. "We've been on the same plane of reality for just over four years now. The _consequences_ for experimenting with a fling are different for gods than for human beings. Professionally, socially, physically, _emotionally_."

"Oh no," I said.

" _You_ know that better than anyone," said the starlight spirit, "after you set Fred up with John."

" _Oh no_ ," I said. "No, seriously, we aren't talking about that yet."

"Here's the thing," he said. "Fred named himself after a god. There's some kind of...protocol with that. Something it gives you and something it binds you to, or so I hear. And you can't just do it."

"He keeps telling me to," I said.

"Yes, well, what do I know," Bowie said. "I named myself after a knife."

"So what do you think happened?" I said.

"I don't know," he said, "you're the eye witness — why don't you present your ideas first?"

I hesitated. "You said...the trail leads to me? What does that mean?"

He tilted his head thoughtfully and said, "Good question." He paused. "You know how it works, don't you? Every time our voice is heard, we live again. We're there. The past day I've been there when the old duet plays. But he hasn't, and finally I got curious —"

"Are you serious?" I said. "Just because my own dark side is getting rowdy, the apotheosis of one of the world's greatest rock stars up and disappears on the astral plane?"

He paused. "What was that?"

"Oh," I said. "Uh, I guess I do kind of have a working theory. The...that messenger said they were from...the dark side of my soul, I guess I should say." I suddenly didn't want to tell him the name I'd given it. "And that they'd taken Freddie to make me finish the prayer — the one for a name, you know?" A beat. "You do know. You said something about how my 'miasma' led to this. You know what's going on."

"Oh, that," he said. "Yes. I have a working theory of my own, you're right. What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to go in after him, I guess," I said. "To my own underworld."

"How?" Bowie said.

I turned quickly and looked at him. "You know I can't get to the astral?"

"Well —" He hesitated. "Yes. You'll need someone to get you there, won't you?"

I got it. "Oh, for fuck's sake," I said.

"It's not just that," he said quickly. "I do want to help you, you know. But — yes, all right, I want to go on an adventure and meddle with your subconscious a little. I'll confess it."

"I don't understand," I said, "why you do this. Both of you, really. This good therapist/bad therapist thing you and Freddie have going with me."

"It's just like singing," the spirit of David Bowie said. "He'll do the high notes and the plaintive sweetness and I'll do the rest. And he gets the sex," he added as an aside to an invisible audience, "can you believe it? There's not a single sex scene with me in the story. If you include all the supplemental materials even John —"

"Not now," I said. "When you break the fourth wall it makes my head hurt." He hadn't actually answered the question, really.

He fell quiet for a moment. Then he said, "There is one condition."

"What?" I said. "What do you mean, condition?"

"Before I'll show you the way Underground," he said, carefully pronouncing the upper case letter.

I stopped mid-breath for a second. "What is it?"

Then I sensed more than saw him smile.

* * *

"You want to return it?"

The tired, wired cashier with the permanent meth-addled stare was directing that stare now at me.

"I have the receipt," I said. I usually didn't get one at Jeff's but this time, for some reason, the cashier (not this one) had put it in my Hello Kitty bag.

"Hey," she said, leaning back to address the perennially suspicious older guy behind the registers, "can he return the beer?"

He looked at me suspiciously. "You want to return the beer?"

I showed him the receipt and the unopened cans. "Uh-huh."

He looked at the other cashier. "It's still cold. Give it to me, I'll put it back in the fridge. You know how to run these goddamn things on the register, right?"

"Yeah I do," she said. She gave him the six-pack and looked back at me. "You got the card it was on?"

I finished processing the return with her and left. I was fully back on the physical plane, but I could just barely feel him over my shoulder, watching and waiting. As I passed the entrance to the dog park, I sensed a hand on my shoulder and turned and the world split and I was looking for a moment at those flickering stars.

He glanced at the gate to the park.

"I don't —" I caught myself before I addressed him out loud out here in public. Not that it would have made much difference in this neighborhood. Lots of people muttered to themselves here. "I don't have a dog," I imagined myself telling him.

"Yes, I know, I know," he said. "Don't you see? Open your mind's eye."

I focused and looked again.

At the edge of the park, front paws pressed against the fencing, was a large black hound of some indeterminate breed. I knew two things at once: this was a female dog, a real bitch, and she wasn't real at all.

Hanging from her plain collar was a shining golden key on a chain.

Bowie tipped his head at her. "My lady," he said.

"Hekate," I said under my breath.

I had not intended to work with Hekate, goddess and witch-queen, but in the days when I had been convinced I was worshipping ancient Greek gods (and not a dead rock star from the twentieth century wearing the essence of those gods on his compatible soul like a hat), the one I identified as a fusion of Aphrodite and Persephone had directed me to her. Hekate was her minister, guardian, friend, lover.

I had found out later that in mystic circles, Hekate was considered the major consort of Hermes, in the same way that those circles considered Aphrodite and Dionysos consorts. Their domains overlapped; they dealt with the same Mystery.

She was, however, Persephone's minister and a guide through the underworld. That much was definitely true.

I walked over to the noncorporeal hound and looked through the fence at her. She lolled her tongue out and stared up at me hopefully.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny bag of treats that the cashier at Mud Bay had given me when I bought food for Juliet. "Good girl," I said, and I opened the bag and shook the treats out.

They were strips of dehydrated rabbit meat, an appropriate offering for Hekate. She snatched the essence of the bits of meat out of the air as they tumbled to the ground. Some other dogs in the park would eat the real thing soon enough, and perhaps they would find it oddly unsatisfying, or perhaps Hekate would have blessed it extra — I could never tell, with her offerings.

The dog looked up at me again.

"Take the key," Bowie said.

I hesitated a moment, then reached through the fence, took hold of the key, and carefully unclipped its chain from the dog's collar. She allowed it, her eyes patient.

After a moment I stepped back. My hand was empty. The key was in my hand. I pocketed it and made a note to myself to remember it was there on the astral plane. I looked up at Bowie and imagined myself saying, "What was that for? Is this the key to the underworld?"

"I don't know what it is," he said, "but if my lady appears, you should do what she says."

I sighed and started back to my apartment, thinking to him as we went, "How long did you say I need to stay sober?"

He shook a finger at me. "You only need to _stay sober_ until tomorrow evening — you drink too much, I won't tell you to go cold turkey for long even if you _do_ need to purify yourself. Then you get one drink every night, until Saturday night."

"And then what?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I'm not finished. It's not just the sobriety. Follow a decent purification protocol, all right? Shower before and after you sleep. Best to avoid sex too, so stay off Grindr. I would _tell_ you to eat small but balanced meals but that would be a lost cause. Drink enough water." He paused and then repeated: "All this, until Saturday night. Then I'll take you down there."

"What does that even mean?" I imagined asking. "I've been to the astral plenty of times. This sounds different."

"It is," he said. "When you go there on your own power, part of you is still here, in some sense. Schroedinger's body. I'll be bringing you there physically."

"Is that even possible?" I thought at him.

"Not by your power," he said. "Not by any mortal's power. But I'm the —"

A huge shout arose from the bar beneath my apartment, drowning out his words. I glanced at him and raised my eyebrows.

"You might as well be going to the Labyrinth," he said.

—In 1986 a peculiar convergence happened. A master of puppet magic got together with a married couple with ties to the land of Faerie and they called up a famous rock star to do a movie. As a result, an entire generation of young adults, mostly young women drawn to the story of a teenage girl voyaging through her personal underworld and defeating an attractive but dangerous foe at the end, has unquestioningly accepted the fae nature of David Bowie, and also (thanks to a strategically placed bit of audio technology) the great size of what lies in his pants.

I rolled my eyes heavenwards and said aloud, "No one can blame me for walking away." No one so much as glanced at me.

"I would," he said.

"What?"

"Blame you," he said. "For walking away."

"I was," I told him, "both expressing irritation with you and making a reference."

He fiddled with the sparking cigarette, which had at some point reappeared in his fingers. "I know."

I finished the walk back to my apartment, let myself back in, checked the time, fed the cat. He followed me patiently.

Eventually I said, "Is there anything else I need to know for now?"

"I wouldn't still be here if there weren't," he said. A beat. Then: "Your boyfriend is powerful, you know that?"

"Yeah," I said. Reluctantly, I added, "You're more powerful, though. From an outside standpoint, anyway."

"I'm more famous these days," he said. "I don't know if that means I'm more powerful. I had a quarter-century of lifespan on him."

"You dodged the plague," I said before I could stop myself.

He said nothing for a moment, and I immediately regretted saying it. When he did speak his voice was very precise. "I wouldn't exactly call it dodging."

"I'm...sorry," I said. "I didn't mean…"

"It doesn't matter," he said. "This is my point. Fred touched, still touches godhood in a way the rest of us, most of the rest of us never did. And some mortal fool's heart just up and took him."

"Yeah," I said. My eyes had started burning. "I'm sorry. I —"

"Stop that," he said. "I'm telling you that _you're_ powerful. You need to decide where that power goes."

"Well," I said, "I mean, I think he's cooperating. They want me to bring my prayer to her — the," I paused, struggled to phrase it, "the goddess in my heart, my holy mother at the center of the Underground — and so does he."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Bowie said.

"Why not?"

He shook his head. "I can't say — you wouldn't grasp it yet, I think. But I'm telling you this isn't how he planned it to happen."

"What?" I said. "What does that mean? How do you know?"

"Because he told me," he said.

"Oh fuck that —"

He waved me silent. "He told me _he'd_ be the one in charge."

"Maybe he is," I said.

I sensed him shaking his head. "He'd be keeping me in the loop if he were," he said. "That's why he told me, you know — he wanted me to help. And this is —" He paused, then shrugged. "Maybe it's not _all_ you," he conceded, "but it's not all him either, and it's not what he wanted."

Slow fear uncoiled in my upper guts. "Are you saying he's really in danger?"

"Oh, not all his aspects —" Another shrug. "Of course not. You don't have _that_ much power. But the part of him devoted to you? Yes, certainly. And it would hurt him a great deal to lose that aspect." A beat. I was still frozen in place. "So be careful, Ari. Get yourself together and figure out what you're empowering."

"What does —"

"I think I've said enough," he said. "I'll be back after your sabbath is over. Make sure you're packed and ready." His cigarette sparked brightly and he was gone.

—It was Monday evening. I had four days before Shabbat began. Anxiety consumed me, and I couldn't just turn to alcohol to deal with that.

He hadn't forbidden marijuana, though, so I filled my pipe.

* * *

Then there was the matter of _the prayer_.

Well, it was no "My Fairy King," no ecstatic poetic song of mystic mystery.

It was supposed to be the long-awaited follow-up to "The Lady with Teeth," a surreal but horrendously raunchy, taboo-filled work of so-called erotica addressed to a mysterious goddess identifying herself as my mother (her monogrammed towels read `FM`, though). She would fuck me in the most absurdly Oedipal way possible, dismember me and eat me alive, and then somehow transform me. I hadn't entirely figured out the details, but in dreams and visions I grew closer every day now.

I had so many half-finished attempts at it lying around. Every now and then I started again. I could never figure out what I was supposed to transform into after the destruction of my old self via weird incestuous cannibal sex.

I could start a new one, I supposed. But I still didn't know if I could finish it in time to rescue Freddie. I didn't even know if I _could_ write it without his presence in my mind, living in the words I wrote.

And I still wasn't totally sure what name I needed to take in it.

I spent a while staring first at a blank screen, then at a blank journal (this time while fiddling with a pen). Then I gave up and went to play video games to soothe my anxiety.

* * *

I had no work on Tuesday this week so I dawdled on getting ready for bed out of both nerves and habit. It was past midnight by the time I started settling in for sleep, recklessly upping my melatonin dose to help me defeat insomnia tonight.

—It wasn't just that. I had the feeling I'd dreamed something important last night. High doses of melatonin can cause vivid dreams and I sought that again now.

Getting down from where I kept my pill bottles on a high windowsill, I once again spotted the glint of silver light on the floor.

A fragment of dream flew back to me. I was feeling exasperated and awkward about something my father had said but there was a storm — he pressed something into my hand —

Realization exploded in my gut and I dashed down to pick it up. And I was right. It was the peculiar token I'd taken from his private belongings after his funeral: a worn-down, very shiny Mercury dime.

His funeral was in late July of 2016. I had at the time only known that I worshipped some mysterious lost pre-Dionysian goddess. But I had opened up the small box from inside his wardrobe and felt a strange kinship between me and that little old coin, so I took it. For the next three years I'd carried it with me as a protective token, keeping it all the more fiercely when I realized who I was with on the astral.

—Then came late August of 2019 and _my latest move_ , a phrase that feels like a euphemism to me for what really happened. Since then I hadn't seen the shiny little coin with its faded bust of Liberty that so many people mistook for a certain ancient god. Reluctantly, with grief, I had presumed it lost.

I turned it over in my hand once, twice, three times — it had a peculiar glint to it now, I was certain, that could not be easily explained by the physics of light. Without thinking, I moved to put it beneath my battered pillow.

I headed to the bathroom to finish getting ready for bed.

* * *

Half an hour of uneasy tossing and turning, maybe; I usually fell asleep with my mind just slightly off the material plane, just enough that I could feel his presence and his love for me, soothing me to sleep like a lullaby. Normally after my roughest days he'd turn up the heat and I'd wind up quietly crying in bed from the force of his love. But now —

Eventually my sleep medications kicked in and my insomnia gave up.

—I sat in nondescript darkness looking down at a perfectly round pool, about as big as a medium-sized hot tub. It was perfectly reflective and mirror-like but I knew immediately that it was water, or something like water anyway.

I said, "Another dream sequence? Isn't that lazy writing at this point?" It seemed like a peculiar thing to say but it was a dream so I didn't question it.

I looked back down at the pool and realized it was actually the same size as an old Mercury dime. I was just very small right now, an ant surrounded by the Infinite.

I said to the pool, "What are you?" No answer, but it seemed obvious that it was whatever my father had given me in the previous night's dream. I'm only dense enough to miss that sort of thing when it comes to other human beings.

Well, usually.

For a few minutes or however long that is in dream-time I just sat there, looking at the mysterious thing in front of me. A peculiar but familiar itch began to build in my legs as I said there, until finally —

I got up and began to pace around the pool.

—I pace as a stim; I jog or dash sometimes, but usually it's a brisk walk. When the right moment hits, pacing opens up gates in my brain like locks on a canal and makes my thoughts flow without doubt or shame or fear along narrative lines, spinning out exciting or terrifying fantasies. On some level I touch the astral.

I hear it's a form of meditation; I was never exactly _trained_ in it. In fact every adult I could remember caring about it when I was a kid had tried to train me out of it.

I was already half-astral here in my dreams and I'd never actively tried to pace here before as far as I could remember. I'd never felt the need to. But something started coalescing in my head all the same as I circled the pool again and again: a picture of what lay on the other side.

It came to me that the pool was not currently tuned; it led to a default location —

Before I could overthink this, I jumped into the pool.

—It wasn't water. Of course it wasn't fucking water. It was quicksilver. It was elemental mercury. The substance pressed in on me for an instant and then I was through, beads of it flying off me to disappear into the ether.

I was Somewhere Else. There was a crossroads here: at its center was that small quicksilver pool. My head ached when I tried to figure out the physics of my arrival, so I didn't.

Four different roads led to the pool and a flashy golden sportscar with wings over the wheel-wells was bearing down on me. I yelled and bolted for the other side.

The car shrieked to a stop at my side. I caught a glimpse of `DEUS EX MACHINA` painted in chrome purple on the side. The front door opened. "Get in," said the god inside, "we're going camping."

" _What?_ " I said.

He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me inside as my stranger danger alarm belatedly went off.

It was bright inside and, I immediately sensed, just enough larger than it appeared on the outside to be comfortable. "What the fuck?" I said as he pushed me into the back seat next to a slight figure in a dark hooded cloak. "I —"

"Sorry I'm late," he said. "I was arguing with this asshole here, took me a nanosecond to realize you'd jumped into my realm, sorry, boss, you're good now, I'm gonna take us out to a safe place and you two got —" He took a breath and checked something. "Shit. Forty-eight minutes till I have to pick you up again. Wheels are in motion, kids, wheels within wheels."

"I'm dreaming," I said. "Time doesn't work that way —" I was missing something obvious but I couldn't figure out what and I was annoyed with this jackass.

He hit the gas. "You _were_ dreaming! Now you're loose on my plane of the astral. And I only paid for an hour in the deal with Hera," he added, "so do what you need to do, Fred."

"That's not enough," said a familiar voice next to me in the spacious backseat. The hooded figure — "You have to get more, namesake."

"Oh my God, Freddie," I said, turning to face him. My heart ached with unnameable feelings before I could prepare myself and my throat closed up and I reached for him.

He caught my hand gently in his even as he pushed his hood back. "Ari," he murmured. "I'm sorry —"

Hermes flipped on the music and his voice hit me all over again, so sweet, promising me a _real_ good time tonight —

"We're taking off now, kids," he said. "Seatbelts on? Doesn't matter, here we go —"

He hit the gas.

The car lurched forward, gathered speed for about an instant as I opened my mouth to protest — 

—and then we were there. "What are you saying," I began to say, over the music still playing, my head suddenly dizzy with the speed at which we had traveled, a speed that made all other fictional hyperdrives and warp speeds seem like silly speeds for snails.

"No other choice, I'm afraid, Fred," Hermes said, ignoring my protests. "Hera will only distract the guards for that long or our merciful Lady will notice, or that...thing."

"He's not a thing," began my astral lover.

But Hermes was opening the doors. "Out! You said you wanted privacy, Fred, here it is! Take your guy and go! I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this if — well, never mind. Forty-seven minutes! Come on, go!"

The immortal spirit of Freddie Mercury, still wearing the vulnerable-looking form of the _kouris_ , grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the car with him. His namesake vanished in a puff of clean-burning magic, the flashy car roaring away.

I said, "Is the music in the vehicle of Hermes usually —"

"What do you think, darling?" he said.

"I think —"

I took a breath and looked around.

"It seemed like the right place to go," he said.

"This is Samikam," I said, looking around us at the little camping spot perched on a lake at the leading edge of the British Columbian wilderness.

"You felt safe here," he said.

It should have been a dreary place right now — _was_ a dreary place right now, in reality. Somewhere out there in reality the winter rain fell, or at least sauntered vaguely downwards as the poets say, on cold and muddy ground. But I would never visit Lake Samikam in winter. Only at the end of summer when the weather was still mellow and golden, the water cold but pleasant. That was when the strange little retreat took place.

Last year it had also been the start of _my latest move_ and, somehow, through the last-minute word and subsequent support of a Canadian friend, that was how I had wound up with all the (frequently old) (mostly white) hippies and witches and miscellaneous bisexuals at Plundering Faerie 2019. They had been there for me in a weird way, and there I had frantically texted negotiations back to the United States to secure myself a new apartment at the very last minute, with an otherwise uncertain future looming before me.

There I had done magic to secure myself that new apartment; the other campers had given me advice on how to do it.

"Where are we really, Freddie?" I asked, looking around us at the hammocks gently swaying, the flicker of the campfire on the beach just down the stairs, the picnic table where I'd received that text from my last roommate and then I'd started screaming about my cat, trapped in an apartment I was never allowed in again all the way back in —

Never mind that.

"Your astral Samikam," he said patiently. "A kind of oasis in the midst of a terrible journey. A place of rest and peace and magic, for fortifying yourself to go on." His mouth twisted downwards. "But we only have forty-five minutes and I can't call my —" He said something I didn't understand. "Not without drawing too much attention. Darling, we'll have to be quick."

"I should run off with you," I said. "What's stopping us?"

"There are greater goddesses than me," he said coolly, "and they have been _invoked_ in this matter."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I can't sit here and discuss theology over tea with you, love," he said. "Not when you know perfectly well what I mean. —We have forty-four minutes."

I was slightly dizzy. Relenting a bit, I said, "What do we need to do?"

"Well —" He hesitated, looked uncertain for the first time since I'd seen him here in this strange dream. "Tell you the truth, I really need you for a whole night. That's what I was trying to get out of my namesake. But his favor to me only extends so far."

"Then why —"

"That's where you come in, dear, I know you're brilliant, so —" He waved a hand at me. "Why don't you find a way to get me released for a night?"

I opened my mouth to ask another question and thought better of it. Instead I said, "Hermes said he got Hera to get you out of — wherever you were."

"Yes," he said. "Of course."

"I'm not sure I would have thought of Hera as an ally," I said. "Why?"

"She's the marriage-goddess," he said.

I paused. I almost boggled again, but then I said, "So we're legit in the eyes of Heaven?"

"In the eyes of some Heavens, certainly," he murmured, his gaze suddenly downcast, demure.

"Come to the Temple of Aphrodite with me," I blurted out without thinking.

—At the start of every Plundering Faerie retreat, the temple priestesses deck out a cabin tucked away at the highest edge of the campgrounds as a reasonably luxurious temple dedicated to a very nice idol of Aphrodite within it. The cabin is strewn with roses, seashells, and condoms, as well as various other supplies for the trysts that take place within it during the ensuing weekend. There are rules for how it may be used, of course — Plundering Faerie is a functional retreat. You can't have a sex cabin without having some kind of regulations.

For one, you have to take off your shoes when you go in.

Now, my divine lover blinked at me. Then he checked his watch. "Forty-two minutes! You think you have time to satisfy me now?"

"I —" I hesitated. It felt like life, the universe, and everything depended on being with him now and my heart sat in my chest all seized up like a stone. "I don't know," I said. "I don't know if I can be a perfect lover for you right now but I want to touch you and feel you and _hold_ you. Freddie, I might never see you again, never feel you again, I can't, I need —" My voice hitched in my throat and I stopped.

But he was smiling so sweetly now. "You'll see me again, love," he said.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm supposed to come up with a better plan than Hermes?"

"He's a _god_ ," he said. "The rules are different for them. Oh, love, if gods could do anything we wanted your life would be so much better."

I blinked back the sudden threat of tears. "I still — I still don't know if I can."

"I believe in you," he said quietly, earnestly, looking steadily at me.

I ached for him but I said, "I don't, though. Believe in me, I mean."

He bit his lip for a moment and admitted, "I know — but then —" A pause. "Why don't you just believe in me? Let me believe in you right back, darling — I'll do that work for you for now."

I stared at him for a long moment. The absurdity of it all struck me just then (as it sometimes does, now and then) and I started laughing tiredly.

He frowned. "What? Don't laugh at me, I'm serious! It wasn't that bad of a line, was it?"

"Oh, honey," I said. I didn't know how to explain to him how absurdly cliched and overly earnest that line was, so all I said was, "You really are an anime princess."

"I'm the _Queen_ ," he said indignantly.

"I love you," I said. "This isn't how I pictured it — I wanted to swoop in and rescue you, sweep you off your feet and pull you into my arms, not have to, I don't know, have Hermes show up like a chaperone."

"You will rescue me, love," he said. "I'm excited for it. But for now —" His breath quickened a little and he looked up at me. "Oh, fuck it! Forty minutes, darling, but I believe in you!"

"What?" I said.

"I believe in your cock, really," he said.

"Oh," I said. Then: "I'll make it extra big for you, love, with some real spicy special features."

"Ah darling — I was never going to deny you. How could I?" Then he laughed, turned away, and started up the path to the little temple, calling back down to me, "Thirty-nine minutes!"

I ran after him. Catching up, I said, "What do you need to do? That you need a night for."

He smiled as he picked his way up the hill. "It's a secret," he said. "A little present for you, before you set off to rescue your princess like a proper hero."

Something clicked in my brain. "It'll be Friday," I said. "You can give me that present then."

He glanced at me and smiled. "Oh yes, that's right, darling. I'll be your Valentine for sure."

—Friday evening was the start of Shabbat like any Friday evening, but the day also marked a Christian saint named Valentine.

"Seriously, though," I said. "What is it?"

He waggled one finger at me. "I'm not telling!" A beat, and he relented a little: "It's — I need to bring you somewhere, show you something. That thing I mentioned before, my —" And he said that word I didn't understand again. This time, though, I perceived some vague intimation of its meaning: it was referring to some kind of astral vehicle, a _mothership of the heart_ in which certain types of gods traveled.

Freddie was one of those gods now.

I said, "Why now?"

"It's part of the seat of my power," he said, "and I'll be able to do something for you there that I wasn't before. But I can't tell you what. You know why."

I nodded. I knew the way his plans worked. I had to stay at least a little bit in the dark sometimes; it was the nature of faith.

He went on, "I will give you the strength you need for the journey ahead. Then it'll be a grand time, I promise! I'll sneak out to join you whenever I can!"

"Freddie," I said, picking my way over a tree root, "What about the prayer?" There were a million more questions I needed to ask him but I went with that one first.

"We'll finish it on your way to me at the heart of the labyrinth, love," he said, reaching a hand down to help me up the last bit of hillside before the temple. "I'll come to you in dreams if I have to, once you're there on the astral." He paused. "I suppose you've talked to David about that?"

"Yes," I said. "He told me you planned something like this. Freddie, is that really necessary?"

"Yes," he said. Then: "Well, no, but it's in my nature and you love it, darling, don't give me any nonsense claiming you don't." I sighed, and he went on, "This isn't it, though. I was supposed to be in charge of it all and I was supposed to be _there_ for you at the right times. You aren't ready. I need to prepare you first."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

He shook his head. Then he checked his watch and said, "Thirty-four minutes, love!"

I grabbed his hand again and I said, "Take off your shoes."

"Of course," he said, lightly slipping out of his sandals. He looked at the short flight of stairs leading up to the cabin. "How does this work —?"

There was no one else here so it wasn't as if I needed it, but I pulled the rope across the stairs as I headed up them. For privacy, you know?

I took off my shoes, then gestured for him to join me as I opened the door. Inside —

—a queen-sized mattress on the cabin floor with some pillows on it, gauzy curtains, rose petals, ambient music playing gently. The idol of Aphrodite looked serenely down at me as my holy lover came in to join me.

"It's still so lovely," he murmured.

"Not as lovely as you," I said. He _was_ still beautiful. I didn't see any bruises or scars on him, although of course that meant little on the astral plane. He was slightly paler than usual, maybe; he looked a little more tired. That was all.

He looked up at me and smiled with the usual hint of shyness to it. His smile was so pure, always — "I missed you," he said softly.

"It's only been a day," I said. "But...I missed you too. I'm going crazy without you. I need you back in my arms —"

"Darling," he said and then glanced at me again, started to reach for my belt. I reached out and tugged at his cloak. But he made an impatient noise and said, "Thirty-three minutes — oh, clothes are such a nuisance," and then he murmured a lyric-spell under his breath and all the clothing on both of us glittered and vanished into sparkles.

My heart jumped. So did something else. I said, "Fuck, I can't wait any longer —"

"You can," he said. "Let me pray to her, love." And he turned and knelt before the idol.

"Freddie —"

He waved me silent; I watched as he lifted his gaze up to her marble face with earnest reverence. "Mother, my holy mother —"

By most accounts the Hellenic Aphrodite was not a maternal goddess. But traces lingered of someone who might have been, back in the old days in Cyprus when the melting pot of Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean cultures brought her to life, just as traces lingered of a martial Aphrodite, a magical Aphrodite, a cosmic Aphrodite who ruled a mad world like a primal Maenad at the side of Dionysos or even above him, one aspect of her celestial and bright, one chthonic and shadowed.

He knelt before her now and I could see all the stars of the heavenly Aphrodite's realm in his eyes. "My holy mother," he said, "I have done everything for you. I have lived and died for your divine love. I only ask your blessing for a little bit of love now —" And he reached one hand back to me.

I knelt next to him and took his hand — I shivered at the sensation of his warm fingers curling against mine.

"Bless our love," he murmured, "bless this act, for your power and my glory." And he breathed out slowly; I felt the power of his spirit rise up to the goddess before us.

"Freddie," I said softly.

Another few moments passed. He closed his eyes. Then — "Yes," he finally said. He got to his feet again and I rose to follow him. "Darling, that's _enough_ of that bullshit, we have thirty-one minutes —" He didn't have a watch on. He never had. It didn't matter. " _Fuck_ me. As hard as you can."

I didn't need any further urging. I grabbed him by the wrists and pulled him into my arms, his body so naked and warm against mine — I kissed him.

Some terrible tension inside my chest eased as I pressed my mouth to his, as I wrapped my arms around him. He made a desperate little noise against my lips, eager and needy. I broke the kiss so I could press my cheek to his and I murmured, "You want me, don't you?"

"Oh, love, yes, please —" He shivered against me, ducked his head to kiss my jawline, my messy curly beard, the soft skin of my throat, my collarbone, he caught hold of my shoulder with a hand and slowly sank to his knees, his lips soft and hungry against my body the whole time.

I cupped his face in my hands and tipped his chin to raise his eyes to me. His hand on my shoulder slid down my chest and settled at my hip; he watched me hungrily, his mouth slightly open. I touched his perfect lips and said, "Honey, these need to be on my cock right now. Right the fuck now —"

I summoned the thing fully into being on my etheric body, making it huge and strange and perfect for him, ridged in little spirals and gently spiked with rippling, shifting studs.

He sighed and delicately cupped my balls in his hands. His gaze fell from my face to my cock and I saw him smirk. "Mmm. Yes — I do think that should be in my mouth right now —"

I drew his mouth to my cock and he pressed his lips to the head of it and I shuddered at the pleasantness of it but before I could even recover he'd opened his mouth and drawn the first few inches of my cock between his lips.

"Ah God," I said. I lifted my hands to his sleek dark hair and started to stroke him gently. He gave a muffled cry of bliss and half-closed his eyes, and he began to suck. His tongue flickered over the crooked tip of my cock and I groaned.

His mouth was full so I wasn't sure at first if he was smiling but there was so much glittering amusement in his eyes. He sucked and he stroked me with his tongue as if his mouth was made for my cock.

I shifted my weight, spread my legs a little, tried not to go insane at that perfect sight, at the feel of his lips and his tongue on my cock. I stayed cool and I said, "That's good, baby, yes, get me good and hard so I can fuck you _good_ —" That was a stupid thing to say, I was already _so_ hard.

But he only laughed softly deep in his throat, and he sucked my cock harder.

I tangled my fingers in his hair, held my hand against his cheek — "You look so fucking _gorgeous_ with your mouth full of my cock, honey," I told him, and he blinked a few times, I caught sight of blissful tears for a second. "God! _My_ God! Suck harder, love." I pushed myself just a little deeper into his mouth and groaned as he drew his tongue down my length in response.

He closed his eyes completely and nursed hard at my cock and I shuddered and held him to me —

"Ahhh —" He shifted deftly in my grasp and pulled his head back, let my aching cock slide out of his mouth. "Oh _love_. I'd suck your dick _forever_ , God, it's _good_ but it's not enough darling." He shuddered. I slid my hands down to his throat, cupped his chin, stroked the line of his jaw with my thumbs as I waited for him to continue. Finally he said in a soft and wounded voice, "Love, oh God, why aren't you ten inches up my asshole right now? God! I need you!"

"You only needed to fucking ask," I said, and he shivered as I knelt down at his side and pulled him in for a rough, sweet kiss; he gasped as I pushed him down to the mattress. I hastily gathered up some pillows so I could bend him over them as he frantically murmured the lyric-spell and held a palm full of lube up to me. And then —

I leaned over him. I tried not to think about my fears, about the world half an hour from now when he slipped out of my grasp and back to some hell inside me I couldn't touch. "I love you so much," I murmured softly to him as I kissed gently all over his ear. With my hands I grasped each cheek of his ass, pulled him open, rubbed the lube all over him and me.

He squirmed helplessly beneath me; I could sense him starting to bliss out in anticipation of our bodies interlocking. "Please," he said raggedly. "I need you I need this I need you _in_ me darling please love oh love —"

I set the head of my cock between his asscheeks and slowly pushed it up against his hole. He hummed erratically with ecstasy beneath me as I opened him up, slowly loosening him, till finally his tight asshole accepted the whole head of my twisted cock.

"More," he gasped out. "Oh I need more." His eyes were almost closed, his mouth open so he could pant in ragged breaths. I ached and my soul thrilled to see him like this, to do this to him.

I wrapped my arms around him and held him close as I slowly, gently pushed my monster cock the rest of the way up his ass. He writhed and wept helplessly beneath me with every inch he took. At last, though, I was balls deep in him, and he shuddered and relaxed beneath me.

Something that had been constricted in me eased then. I was in him, he was on me, we were _one_ and the universe was right again. "I love you," I said, like I'd said so many times before since our spirits collided, man and god, in the cosmic sea years ago.

He sighed slowly. "Oh darling. There's _nothing_ like lying beneath you, _full_ of your cock —"

I tucked my face against his shoulder, my cheeks suddenly burning. "Freddie," I protested.

He cut off with a soft gasp. "Ah love when you're inside me and you call me by my name —" His body arched against me, pressed up into me, and I moaned a bit myself at how wonderfully _willing_ he was as always. "I'm so happy, love, I'm so —"

I thrust roughly into him and his words disintegrated into sweet little moans that sent chills down my spine. I thrust again and again, fucked him hard and fast, one hand on his hip pinning him against the pillows —

I pressed the palm of my other hand over his quick-beating heart. My own eyes stung with unshed tears of ecstatic joy. "Oh fuck, Freddie, I love you, you know that — my fucking queen — I _love_ you," and I kept saying it, nuzzling against his jaw and throat and ears and soft dark hair as I spoke those sweet endearments.

The astral fragmented slightly around us as he writhed in ecstatic receptive love beneath me.

Energy coursed from my mouth speaking love to him, kissing him — down my spine to my cock where it thrust up his ass and gave him such perfect pleasure. I was electric and on fire with mystic _eros_ ; I was defined by that arc of flaming love like a flare slinging out from the surface of the sun, I was the awful writhing serpent who held the Sun in its coils, and he of course was the Sun herself.

I didn't quite think about it consciously but I let this energy radiate like a miniature sun itself out from my cock where it pressed inside of him and he shrieked in pleasure —

All tangled up like mythemes in an ancient story, we came together.

After a while I became aware of our breathing — of my chest shuddering against his back, his soft panting breaths. I was still hazy with the pleasure of sex with him but I was also aware of something else. "Freddie," I murmured.

"Mmm —" He sighed pleasantly. "Ari. Oh, I love you, darling."

I idly took a lock of his hair in my fingers and played with it for a moment before I said, "How much time do we have?"

"Doesn't matter," he murmured. "Fuck me again."

"Freddie…"

"Nineteen minutes," he said. "Fuck me again."

"I want to," I said. I was still half-erect inside of him and since this wasn't the real life I could just go ahead and get fully hard again if I wanted to. Especially if he kept sighing like that beneath me, his lean shoulders trembling —

I thought about it, and I moved more energy down to my cock, set it pulsing with raw magic power at regular intervals along my shaft.

"Ah!" He squirmed helplessly beneath me. "Oh yes love _do_ me like that, please, I need it —" He was still desperate for me, for my cock inside him. The thought made me even harder all over again.

"I want to give it to you," I murmured into his ear, kissing it lightly between words. "I want to, honey —" I was grinding my hips on him, thrusting slowly into him with every word.

"Yes," he said raggedly. "Ah, _give_ it to me, give it to me please darling, fuck me as deep as you can —"

He was always madly eager for my cock; that wasn't new. It was just who he was. But I perceived such an extraordinary need in him this time it troubled me. I pressed my face into his hair and said quietly into his ear, "I'm going to find you there in the dark, you know. I will. I promise. I'll bring you back to me for good."

He laughed softly, unevenly. "Just like you did the first time. Yes. You'll find me. Oh, love, harder!"

I thrust more and more roughly in and out of him; I could hardly disobey such an earnest command from him. He shivered and trembled around my cock and I groaned and said, "Fuck, I'm going to come —"

"Not yet," he said quickly, "wait, love, will you get me off first? I want to lie here all orgasmic and tight and feel you fucking _pound_ my ass till it hurts so good, oh please —"

I stopped myself, my breathing still rough. "Yeah," I said, reaching around into the pillows to take hold of his warm stiff cock; he stirred and twitched wonderfully against my palm. I began to stroke his cock gently as I fucked his ass hard and rough.

He squirmed blissfully under my weight, he gasped with pleasure; I kissed his shoulders at first, then started biting and sucking at his skin. Finally I reached my other hand around and took the base of his cock and his balls firmly in it, gently stroking and squeezing, while I toyed with the rest of his cock with my other hand, and at the same time I made my own cock pulse harder and faster right inside his asshole. Of course — he came soon enough, moaning in pure sweet tones as he did.

"Aah, how good," he murmured against a pillow. His eyes were glassy with ecstasy. "I can't feel anything but your love filling me up. Love, you _must_ keep fucking me."

Of course I did. I slowed down a little, though.

—It took effort on both our parts to reach a place where I could do certain things to him. The first time he'd asked me to keep fucking him after he came I'd stopped when I realized it was hurting him, that he was too tight and sensitive to take my cock without pain at that point. He'd gotten rather annoyed.

It wasn't nearly as bad as the first time I'd had the problem.

I'd been half-astral (as I was in the days before I fully bound myself to Freddie and learned to properly meet him via that connection) in one of my special private rituals with my Mystery goddess, awkwardly attempting to roleplay a generic ravisher-god/Kore scenario that she had asked me for. I kept getting cold feet about that rape fantasy shit. Not that I hadn't had them from both ends — but with another person on that end it was different, even if that person was a goddess I wasn't sure I actually believed in (who later turned out to be a very lonely and now very smitten dead rock star).

Finally she just up and vanished off my dick. Poof! One minute a sexy trembling goddess, eyelids fluttering as she patiently continued to beg me not to take her maidenhead from her, though she was mad with intoxicated lust from the bewitching underworld fruit I had fed her — the next, goddamn nothing. She just wasn't there. She had grown tired of my hemming and hawing and probably gone off to call up David Bowie instead.

Back in the astral here and now, I gave my holy lover what he wanted this time.

He whimpered softly under me as I kept thrusting myself into him, kept moving my monster cock inside him. His fingers dug into the pillows for just an instant and then he sighed and took me blissfully, the rest of his body as loose and liquid as his asshole was tight.

I knew if I looked closely at his gorgeous dark eyes I'd see infinite galaxies of ecstatic stars spiraling out within them, so I did. Then I pressed my lips to the side of his face, nuzzled him, kissed the edge of his mouth and he made the sweetest little indescribable noise of contentment.

My hands tightened on his hips and I thrust harder into him and finally came in that moment.

For a minute I lay atop him listening to him breathe roughly, stroking his hair as I often did after coming inside him. The seconds passed much too eagerly.

Eventually he sighed and gave me a nudge. "Oh, love, I'm sorry — seven minutes."

"Fuck," I said, pulling myself up and out of him. 

He straightened up and rose to his feet quickly but when he looked at me he was biting his lip. "Ari," he said. "I —" He stopped and shook his head. Then he smiled. "I suppose I should bring our clothes back," he said.

"Yeah," I said, fidgeting awkwardly with my fingers, wanting to touch him again already.

"Mmm —" He looked up at me just a moment longer and said, "Kiss me, darling."

 _That_ I could do. I took him by the shoulders again, then cupped his chin in my hands, and I drew his mouth to mine. He sighed and breathed out against me, I felt his lips shape the words of a lyric-spell, and then the weight and texture of my clothing solidified on my body once more. I felt fabric rustle against my face as well and when I pulled back from the kiss I saw he was back in his cloak.

"What are you wearing under that, anyway?" I asked.

He raised a finger to his lips. "We're going to save that for another scene," he said. "No time to worry about it now. Come on, let's go get our shoes."

"Wait," I said. I glanced at the idol of Aphrodite in the back of the cabin.

He paused and followed my gaze, then nodded. He turned one more time to the statue and murmured, "Oh, mother, if we satisfied you, bless my love on his journey."

A chill ran down my spine and I shivered. "Freddie," I said. "I didn't mean you had to ask for, I don't know — protection for me or whatever."

"I wanted to," he said, and he made his way out of the cabin. I followed him. Outside, we put on our shoes and started back down to the road.

"Three minutes," he murmured as we stood by the parking lot.

I reached for his hand and he slid it into mine. I said, "I don't want to let go of you."

"You'll see me again," he said. "Don't forget, darling. I love you. I have faith in you as you do in me."

"I —" I just looked at him for a long moment. I lifted my free hand to stroke a lock of hair back from his suddenly very tired-looking face. He showed no fear but now, with his careful mask all askew from our lovemaking, I could tell he'd been through _something_. "Freddie," I said, "what's going to happen if I can't save you?"

"I can't imagine," he said. "I can't imagine because you're _going_ to swoop in and rescue me," and he pressed one hand to my cheek, tenderly, "like the perfect and handsome lover you are." His eyes held so much love for me it almost hurt to look at them.

I looked into his eyes anyway and said, "Kiss me."

He smiled so sweetly, tipped his head back, and leaned up to kiss me without the slightest hesitation. I kissed back with so much longing, and I wrapped my arms around him and held him close. The world seemed perfectly correct for just a moment, with him in my arms, on my lips — and I felt him sigh into my mouth and I knew he felt the same way, holding me in turn and being held by me.

—A breeze nearby.

The god said, "Time's up, Fred. Hera's going to be on my case in a second and then all hell will break loose."

I let go of him and he stepped slowly out of my arms. He looked at Hermes, and then he looked back at me, and then back at his namesake — "Darling, you can't spare another fifteen minutes? It's just I could use another fuck."

"Not even ten," said Hermes. "Come on."

"No flashy car this time?" I said.

"Just the old stick," said the god, holding up his caduceus.

My beloved god held out his hand to his namesake. "Fine," he said. "Spirit me back."

"Back _where_?" I asked.

He shook his head. "You know," he said. "Besides, there isn't time."

Hermes grabbed his hand. "All right, we'll be off in a sec," he said. He looked at me (I could feel my holy lover's gaze on me as well and it was hard not to look at him instead —). "As for you — turn around."

I hesitated, not wanting to look away from my god — but after a second I turned. Where before me had only been grass and picnic tables a minute ago, now there was the strange quicksilver pool through which I had first entered the bit of the astral plane that was the domain of Hermes.

I quickly glanced back. "I —"

They were gone. I hadn't even felt them leave. Something twinged painfully in my heart. I missed him already.

I knelt before the pool and felt my summery Canadian surroundings fade away into darkness as I concentrated. From this side I sensed a little more about its nature, but I couldn't quite put it into words yet. Maybe when I woke up, then. Assuming I remembered all this.

I stood up and stepped into the strange pool once more, and it took me back into dreams.

* * *

A few more fragments of dreaming before I woke up —

There I was at the beach again as a child. It occurred to me that I could just swim across the ocean and visit a friend in Europe, so I began to, but I wound up descending underwater into the New York City subway system instead. At some point I realized it wasn't the New York City subway at all, but the network of tunnels and shopping spaces underneath downtown Montreal — a place I had visited all of once, many years ago.

I walked through this space for a little while, and after a time I knew it was no longer Montreal either, but somewhere with no human name.

I opened the door to a strange little store. It was some kind of antique store, one of only a few shops still operating in this half-empty mall.

The owner of the shop sat hunched over on a stool behind the counter, fiddling with some kind of small craft involving needles and thread. They said, "Why are you here?" I wasn't sure but I thought I could detect a trace of emphasis there, _why are **you** here?_

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the key the dog-goddess had given me. "I want this appraised," I said.

The shopkeeper opened one eye wide, squinting the other suspiciously closed, and gestured for me to hand over the key. I held it out cautiously.

They snatched it out of my hand and peered close at it, sniffing —

"Please don't lick it," I said.

They said, finally, "It opens a red box."

"What?" I said. That wasn't what I'd been expecting.

"A red box," they repeated. "Don't be obtuse."

"What's in the box?" I asked.

"How should I know that?" they said. "But I can tell you it's not a box made to be opened. It doesn't even want this key to exist."

I nodded. For some reason this answer satisfied me in the dream. "Okay," I said, and I took back the key.

—I have no idea what happened after that. At some point there was an alligator.

I woke up, squinting tiredly at the grimy sunlight, and as my cat stretched and prepared to scream at me, I got up to take my pills. My dreams last night were a jumble, but right in the middle of them was a clear period of astral adventure (not to mention astral sex). I had some idea what I had to do, and that would have to be enough. It was time to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [sex-related content notes]  
> (a parent being very mildly inappropriate about sexual boundaries in a dream; minor rough sex; references to past consensual nonconsent play)
> 
> [other warnings]  
> (mentions of past death; strong implications of cannabis and alcohol abuse; more discussion of unsafe sex and the AIDS crisis; brief reference to anti-Black racism associated with drug use; brief joking about hard drug use)


	3. it's just as though I hold the flower that touches you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Besides, you don't interrupt sex with a mad fae queen to ask her what she's doing to you. That's not the done thing."
> 
> The dramatis personae expands to include eccentric friends, fairy queens, and the father of mixed martial arts; negotiations are performed and preparations made before the Sabbath, also known as Valentine's Day, 2020.
> 
> Oh, and the sex gets surreal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skip to the ending notes for full content warnings.

I have a feeling that it's been a while. I have a feeling that a lot of things have happened, that the world keeps on going, going, going right off that cliff even when pens on paper (or fingers on keyboards) stop. But that's not important, anyway. What's important is that I'm back, and so is the story.

Let's get a couple things about this chapter out of the way before I go on, all right?

The big one is this: there's a new character in the background that we've all come to know well over the past year. Freddie's not the sort to let her out of his sight. Some call her Miss Rona. That's right, she's pandemic, my COVID-one-nine--well, anyway, she's playing second fiddle to a novel virus from a few decades back in this story, but she's there in the shadows. I couldn't keep her out.

I also have to confess that in this chapter, I fuck someone other than Freddie. Sometimes I'm just not sure how exclusive we are, but in the end I think he's okay with it.

Look, I can't delay much longer. The story has to come out. The words must flow. Are you _ready_?

I know I'm not.

\--Ari Golden-Hart, waking up to a new world.

* * *

It was Tuesday. In theory, I hated Tuesdays.

Four years ago in that terrible dark year of someone's lord 2016, I had worked on health insurance claims at a data processing center in a miserable suburb to the south (where the poor people went—the rich went to Bellevue in the northeast or the islands to the west of the city). It was a so-called real job, with a computer-filled office and all; I'd worked eight-hour days from Monday to Friday, and somehow I'd survived.

Somehow.

It had actually been pretty narrow; some days of that job, in the last hour of the day when everyone else had left and I was mopping up a few remaining claims, I sometimes fantasized about hanging myself with computer cables in the supply closet. It was pretty bad. Ever since I'd started asking for mental health accommodations for my ADHD and anxiety, they'd targeted me for harassment to try to make me quit. The only thing that made it possible for me to get through every miserable day there was my little black MP3 player spouting my favorite albums into my ears.

But Tuesdays were truly hell. The numbing shock of having jumped into the hot water on Monday had worn off; now I could only slowly boil, the dreadful atmosphere and oppressive silence save for the click-clack of a dozen different keyboards pressing inwards on my soul as I sat beneath the watchful gaze of my supervisors, wondering when they would misgender me next out of spite. But I had to clear at least two hundred claims per day to keep up my metrics, so I just kept going.

—All of that was meaningless now. I no longer had a real job. This had once concerned my friends—they shook their heads and whispered dourly to each other, "I'm really worried about the trajectory of Ari's life."

Because now I worked retail, and that was the sin bin, the place lesser people went when they failed out of life. My former friends had tried so hard to rescue their favorite gay accessory's life from the sin bin, and I had resisted their efforts (I had even had the audacity to suggest that learning to code would not fix my career path), so in the end, for many very good reasons, they had needed to cast me away from the group. For everyone's emotional safety, of course.

It hadn't been a Tuesday when Robin had finally snapped and kicked me out of her luxury condo facing the Puget Sound and onto the streets of Seattle, at least.

It had been a Thursday. My usual work week had been over and I'd been able to use the coming weekend to save myself.

It was a Tuesday now and I had to get everything in order _before_ the weekend this time. Fortunately, in this case I wasn't entirely flying by the seat of my pants; I had the ghost of an idea. Still—I had a lot of gaps to fill in.

It was past ten by the time I finished my basic morning routine of taking my pills, feeding my cat, and making myself coffee. I put off showering for now; I wasn't going out yet. Instead I sat down at my computer and logged into the Gnu again. It was time to talk to some mortals about this whole mess.

Local friends were a distant memory; all of those (and most of my online friends as well) had peeled away from me after Robin's volley of abuse accusations. The ones left were a handful of acquaintances and old friends on various social media...and the denizens of the Gnu.

The text environment unscrolled before me on the screen and I checked who was active in the chat at the moment.

It was not a very large chat. The regulars numbered under a dozen people, and even the occasional drop-ins didn't raise the number that much. But I trusted them all with all the peculiar personal information I gave them, and that was what mattered.

This Tuesday morning at quarter past ten Pacific Time, there were only two active chatters other than me on the Gnu. These were the following:

* Sonine, or Soulbird, a busy parent with a side career in both sci-fi and spiritual writing who lived in a sprawling polycule in suburban New England. He had been an older sister figure to me for many years, though these days she looked up to me sometimes as a trans elder. They seemed more peculiar in their gender than me and I struggled sometimes to understand it. Regardless—Sonine supported me and knew how to cut through the bullshit when I melted down.

* Dustland, or Dusty, was a newer member of the Gnu who had arrived via the funnel that was Broomstick Forums out on the great web. They had shown up just a couple years ago there, not long after my own god-queen had revealed himself to me, puzzling over what had seemed, back then, an absurd situation to them: the quiet little voice in their head that had long supported them as they struggled to part ways with bad jobs and abusive family turned out to be Bruce Lee. I had jumped into their posts immediately, thrilled to not be alone in being contacted by a dead celebrity.

They were both solid when it came to giving advice. Still, I hesitated. What had happened to me over the last few days was beyond our usual fare. Dusty got directed by their patron in peculiar ways often, and Sonine experienced strange feelings when he participated in rituals. But—

Well, _they_ weren't married to a dead rock star on the astral plane. I really did bring this shit down on myself. It was worth it, though, for him.

—I looked back at the screen. Both Sonine and Dusty had generated archaic waving emoticons to greet me. I volleyed back such an emoticon and added one indicating dazed, exhausted confusion, with its eyes replaced with dizzy spirals.

Dusty was the first to take the conversational bait. "I wondered where you were…"

I decided to bury the lede for now. "I can't get to the astral plane right now," I said.

"I meant here," Dusty replied. "Though, come to think of it, I haven't gotten any messages from you the past couple of days."

Along with a handful of others, Dusty and I exchanged messages and gifts often on the astral plane as an exercise in travel. It was more difficult for me to communicate with other mortals there than it was to simply meet Freddie—often my presents arrived changed and my messages garbled. But I kept trying, and we'd had some surprising successes.

I didn't think I was going to be sending a lot of gifts anytime soon, though. "I can't get to the astral plane because Freddie is gone," I said.

Sonine's status on the sidebar changed from KID-WRANGLING to ACTIVE and they promptly generated a question mark on screen.

"That doesn't seem likely," Dusty said. "Are you sure it's not brainweasels interfering?"

"Yes," I said, a little annoyed at my own issues coming up like that, unwanted. "It's not like that." I paused, then followed up with another message, "He was planning to get himself kidnapped to force me to go on a journey in my own underworld to confront my inner darkness and rescue him."

"That seems in-character, yes," Sonine remarked.

"Sounds like something went wrong," said Dusty.

"Yeah…" I let that hang while I tried to figure out how to say it. "My Shadow—or whatever it is—acted too soon. And maybe has strong allies? I'm not sure what's going on, but Freddie's really gone and trapped in some kind of underworld and I can't get to the astral plane." I realized belatedly that that made things seem a little too dire, so I added, "David Bowie is going to help me get there to save him."

That was when Nyx the resident fairy-worshiping witch who worked in costume design logged into the Gnu. I looked at the screen for a long moment and realized I would have to back up and explain everything.

Dusty gave Nyx a waving emoticon and said, "It looks like things got weird for Felix."

—No, that one's not part of my legal name. I have a web of names stretching from my wallet to the far corners of the internet; it's good infosec for a magician and astral traveler.

In any case, I backed up and explained everything to my three friends logged into the Gnu, and then I sat and stared at the screen and waited for responses.

Dusty said, "This doesn't seem like a very fair trial to you."

Nyx said, "OK, wait, I might have missed something but how are you supposed to arrange his return if you can't get to the astral plane?"

I groaned in the real world at the inevitable question.

Sonine generated a sighing emoticon, apologized, and set her status to KID-WRANGLING again.

"Well," I said, "does Bruce have any ideas, Dusty?"

—The spirits of Bruce Lee and Freddie Mercury had not immediately hit it off. When I had expressed interest in visiting the Lee gravesite to pay my respects to the local apotheoses, every divination I generated went off the rails with anger and jealousy. Freddie had been famously possessive of lovers during his lifetime and as a god he was a jealous one.

In turn, as Dusty had later related to me, Bruce Lee was alarmed by this over-the-top melodramatic response and became worried Freddie would lash out at his already troubled family in some way to get back at him for a homewrecking in which he had no interest.

In retrospect, neither of them were a threat to the other, of course. Bruce wasn't really my type when it came to that, and besides that wasn't something he was interested in as a protective family deity. Freddie, meanwhile, for all his dramatic and sometimes sinister posturing, would never cause such deliberate harm.

After Dusty arrived on the Gnu to chat with the rest of us on that corner of the internet and I learned more about their spiritual journey, Freddie and Bruce had somehow become an odd pair of friends. I think they would actually make a good comedy duo.

On the Gnu in the present day, Dusty said, "Actually...he's been quiet the past few days." They followed it up with, "There's been almost a thousand deaths in China so far. Some of them are part of the Lee lineage. He's busy, I think."

I paused and thought about how to respond to that.

I hadn't exactly been keeping up with the news about the novel coronavirus. My own life was chaotic enough as it was, and new viruses were not exactly a comfortable subject for me. But of course Bruce was in action.

"I'll leave him alone for now, then," I said, and Dusty sent a nod.

Sonine changed his status back from KID-WRANGLING to ACTIVE and sent a little emoticon of glasses; she was reading the conversation. "Sigh. Ellie has discovered her sisters have hair and is trying to eat it."

"Kids," I said, having little interaction with such beings in my trendy (and extremely sketchy) urban neighborhood, except occasionally at work, where I had given away all my promotional Hello Kitty buttons to interested small children.

"Freddie really doesn't do things by halves, does he?" he said after a minute of reading. "I mean, we knew that, but."

"He does things by half-agains, I think," I said. "Maybe twice-overs."

Dusty, Sonine, and Nyx all reacted with laughing emoticons. Sonine went on after a moment, "Do you have any plans, then?" Nyx gave the question a plus-one emoticon.

"Sort of," I said, and I followed it up with, "Not for the...getting to the astral plane...part. But I have an idea for what to do once I'm there."

"Wasn't Bowie going to take you to the astral plane?" Dusty asked.

I shook my head automatically back in real life, and then I typed, "He was going to take me to my personal underworld, which is—" I paused, considered deleting, and just went on, "Kind of the astral plane? But not. There's levels or something. Anyway he was gonna do it by taking my whole actual body there. I'm not doing astral negotiations with my real body in the balance, thanks."

There was a pause. For a second, I thought I felt something in the air, something sweet. Then--

"Why don't you ask the Queen of Apples?" Nyx said.

"Well…" I let that hang for a second, unsure of how to phrase the rest. "There's sort of a problem with that."

—The fae Queen of Apples was a mysterious figure, relatively modern in the writings of fairy researchers and visionaries: a sensual, sexual, deeply queer figure, associated with love and liberation, represented in the heavens by the planet Venus. I could not help but think that she was related to—

"Aphrodite," I explained. "She's basically a fairy version of Aphrodite, I think. I've talked about it before. She must already be involved."

Nyx reacted with an uncertain emoticon and then said, "Are you sure? If it's like...different facets? Maybe this one's pointing in another direction. That's what they're telling me to say, anyway."

"Oh, they're talking to you about this?" I typed and sent quickly.

"I feel like it," she said. "I have the light feeling I get sometimes right now."

I took note, then—and I sent the command to use the music box and get a random lyric.

`My fairy king can do right and nothing wrong!`

Sonine pronounced, "Heh," and then they sent a smirky emoticon.

"See?" Nyx said, and she sent a grin as a reaction. "Freddie's into it."

"It's interesting that the music box is still working," Dusty said.

"Yeah," I said. "I noticed that the other day. I'm not sure what it means."

"It means he's still out there somewhere," Sonine said. "Waiting for you to rescue him." He waited and then added, "Possibly by boning down with a hot fairy queen, apparently he doesn't judge. ;-)"

"Yeah, yeah," I sent. "How am I supposed to get in touch with the Queen of Apples if I can't go astral?"

"How did you do it with Freddie before?" Nyx asked. "Back when he was your Mystery goddess."

"The ritual," I said. Then I added: "I don't think I could do that with another goddess."

"Fair enough," she said. "But you did have a way!"

"True," I said.

While I was trying to think of something else to follow that up with, Nyx went on, "Try leaving her an offering. Apples and honey."

"This has not been a sweet or good year so far," I said.

Sonine, one of whose husbands was Jewish, gave that a thumbs-up reaction.

"Remember the egg," Nyx said.

"Oh, God," I said aloud back in my seat at my computer.

The fucking egg!

Months ago just before _my last move_ as the euphemism goes, I'd been at the end of my rope as my relationship deteriorated with my roommate and (as she related the situation to them every time) the rest of my group of close friends. I'd been desperate.

And Nyx had said on the Gnu, "I'm getting that light feeling again."

I had listened.

"They're saying...OK, this is weird???"

I had still listened.

"They want you to go out to the bay with an egg, rub it on your forehead, and then throw it into the Sound."

I mean, it kind of made sense. Eggs were powerful spiritual absorbers of negative energy. I wasn't sure what all the rest of it meant, but I was willing to give it a shot.

"You don't have to," she'd warned me. "I mean...remember I worship fairies, haha." Laughing emoticon. "You know how they are."

I did, but still I had gone out there with an egg, avoiding the tourists and occasional dog-walker as best as possible, and I had rubbed it on my forehead and flung it into the Puget Sound.

The next afternoon when I got home from work, Robin and I had argued again. This time, though, I pushed her just a little too far, and I wound up out on the street, and everything spiraled out from there—

"Yeah," I said on the Gnu now. "But honestly...losing Freddie is worse than all that. I have to try it."

And I set my status to ASTRAL VOYAGING and got out of my computer chair.

* * *

Mind you, I still hadn't exactly figured out how I was going to approach the Queen of Apples. Leaving an offering was one thing. The problem was that if I actually met her again, we were absolutely going to fuck. There was just no way around it, with a goddess like her and a guy like me—and this time, without Freddie around to make it a threesome, it would just be weird. It almost felt like cheating.

Of course Freddie and I had gone off and courted this Queen of Apples as soon as Nyx started talking about her on the Gnu. Of course we'd had wild astral sex with her, our very selves intermingling in lurid, trippy ways. She and Freddie merged as he once had with Ariadne-Aphrodite in my early meditations; I tasted their divine flesh and she turned mine into something strange and sweet to her taste and took what she wanted of it as well.

I've always been good with Queens on the astral plane; they really fall for me.

In the middle of this lovely sordid affair, all of a sudden, she'd reached into the hole in my etheric body where my devotional tramp stamp was in my physical body and jammed _something_ in there, something long and hard.

No pegging jokes, please...this was serious!

I was, of course, way too into it to ask her what was going on at the time. Besides, you don't interrupt sex with a mad fae queen to ask her what she's doing to you. That's not the done thing.

Later, as she kissed me and my own god-queen goodbye for the night, she'd murmured to me, "Try to grow some backbone, dear, won't you?"

I went still and hot with shame and upset, and then Freddie put one slim firm hand on my wrist and said, as he pulled me away from the other holy queen, "Darling--that was a spell--she just couldn't _help_ being a little cruel with it, that's how we do it, you know?"

I half-understood then. Later, in brief fumbling awkward astral interactions, Nyx had also (somewhat apologetically) put a hand up my spine and examined the thing. When she emerged from her trance, she'd said it was magical applewood—

—installed to help me grow a decent spine in the most spiritual of senses.

But Freddie had been merged into her divine soul then, in that way that gods became part of each other. I had been able to trust her implicitly because she was also him at the time. Without that assurance—

Without that assurance, the Queen of Apples was just a fae manifestation of yet another facet of the terrifying and beautiful mystic force of nature that was the Maenad's Mystery, the grand ontological domain of the cosmic Aphrodite.

I still didn't understand the Mystery myself. It tended to drive seekers mad, as it had once driven the goddess herself mad. I knew a few things, though. I knew that mortals had reason to fear her. She was, after all, in some ways a queen of death as well as life, and certainly she was unpredictable.

Most of all, beyond the madness and motherhood, I knew she was hot as hell and _always_ down to fuck.

"Freddie, what should I do?" I said to the empty air of my dingy apartment. No answer, of course; even Juliet was asleep on my bed, and she twitched only faintly in response to my words.

I picked up my phone from where it was charging, swiped open the Tarot app I used, and drew a card. The neat little image flipped over…

...the Queen of Wands, bearing a great tree branch in her right hand like a staff, just like some other Queen I knew would hold a microphone stand.

I didn't know if this message was from him, wherever he was. But in this context, its meaning was obvious.

It was time to see one Queen about another.

* * *

There's nothing like urgency to keep me from actually getting something done, and there's nothing like procrastination on one thing to get me working on something else. I spent the next couple hours actually cleaning, for once; in that time I got Juliet's litterbox about seventy percent clean and washed a dish, three spoons, a fork, and a knife in a sudsy bucket (the sink was overflowing).

When I finally looked up from the bucket, the quality of the light had changed just so past the grimy windows. Several dogs played and made their doggy noises out in the dog park across the alleyway--this one had been called "the sketchy dog park" by a former coworker, but the dogs seemed to enjoy it well enough. Now, it was growing busy in the midday light.

I washed and dried my hands, then checked my phone for the time. It was nearly one in the afternoon. I had too much to do to put this off any longer if I wanted to actually do it and not go to sleep feeling like a miserable anxious failure tonight.

It was time to make an offering. The problem was all my apples were rotten and the honey bottle had leaked.

I sighed at the contents of the fridge, then closed it and went to shower and get ready to go out.

* * *

By quarter past two I was out on the street in my usual somewhat sparkly getup, headed for the market, all my magic gear tucked away in my pockets and my wallet as well.

It was, of course, a terrible idea to buy fruit at Pike Place Market--honey you could get in small amounts for cheap, but even one apple would set you back. I took the long way and swung by Jeff's to grab a singular apple.

The cashier, who I thought to be an assistant manager (he frequently sported a budding version of the suspicious squint the manager had), slid the apple back across the counter to me. "What do you need one apple for?"

I pulled my credit card out and tucked it away. "It's an offering to a fairy queen," I said.

"Huh," he said as I took the apple and slipped it into an inside pocket in my jacket. "Do fairy queens like apples?"

"Some do," I said as I headed out, not adding that they were the really hot ones.

I made my way through the streets of downtown, carefully avoiding passing by my workplace on my day off. The streets were only moderately busy with vehicle traffic and not too crowded with pedestrians. Winter was not a busy time of year for this city; even now, on a relatively dry day, the air felt damp on my skin, and the chill soaked right in.

Still, as I headed down the hill to the market, I caught sight as always of the wide-eyed and noisy tourists packing themselves into lines for the famous cafes and restaurant stands. I felt the energy in the air of the goblin market.

There could be no question that Pike Place Market was a place on the edge of Faerie. Ever-changing old markets often were, and on top of that, this one featured an abundance of strange little passages and eerie underground hallways. Most people were only familiar with the length of Pike Place aboveground, with the food stalls, cafes, and trendy little stores on one side and the market stalls on the other. But beneath the stalls and the fishmongers, the market extended several stories down into the cliffside above the waterfront; and behind the cafes and trendy little stores, strange doors, nooks, and corridors dotted the historic buildings.

If I was going to find some clue about how to reach the Queen of Apples, it was likely to be here.

I turned into the market at its start on Pike Street and paused at a stall selling local honey to purchase a few straws of it. Then I wandered—

—letting my feet take me away from the overwhelming crowds and through the narrow, forgotten passages, until I stumbled out into the wan clouded sunlight again. I was in the little garden, where volunteers grew vegetables for the food bank and tourists chalked messages onto the walls.

I breathed in slowly. The air felt slightly richer than usual despite the wintry chill and the current sparse state of the garden. I made my way to the far side of the garden, where the greenery clung to a ledge overlooking the waterfront far below. I pulled my gaze away from the old luxury complex where I'd once stayed and looked down at the garden plot in front of me, mostly bare in the winter, only bits of green peeking up from the earth and a few hardy plants full-grown.

Reaching into my jacket, I took out the apple; I bit open a straw of honey (tasting it for just a moment) and squeezed it out onto the fruit. Then I drew in a deep, intentional breath, pulling pure energy into my etheric body as I inhaled into my physical one—

—and breathed out in the direction of the apple. "Be blessed," I said, "and be a gift to the Queen of Apples." I set it down amidst the plants and I felt a tiny chill crawl down my spine.

With that done, I turned around and headed back into the corridors of the market.

I rarely came to the garden; there wasn't anything to buy there and rarely much to do. My feet betrayed me as I headed back to the bronze pig that marked the entrance, and after a few moments I looked up and realized I wasn't sure where I was. I took a few steps down the hallway—

—and I knew, somehow by instinct, that the familiar lay behind me. If I kept going down this path, I would get more lost. If I turned back, I'd reach the bronze pig and be safe.

I took a quick breath, straightened up a little, and kept walking down the path.

It turned sharply; the tiled floors and smooth walls both seemed a little more patchwork now, like they'd been made of pieces from several different puzzles. Bits of the walls were crumbly.

At the end of the hall was a door. I opened it. Beyond was the garden.

—It was the garden at Pike Place Market, but it wasn't. The plants were all in bloom in the cool wet winter, bearing rich fruits I'd never seen before. Still they all smelled of apples.

I heard laughter from further in, sweet and bell-like. I went towards it.

Sitting against the ledge that overlooked the waterfront—now showing something stranger and deeper and darker than the Puget Sound and the bits of city clinging to it—was a Queen of Faerie.

Sie wasn't exactly a fae lady; the Queen of Apples disdained binary gender and sometimes I forgot how queer sie could be. Still sie was beautiful, with long full tree-dark hair, flawless wood-brown skin and honeyed eyes, lips like apples in shadow—

"You can stop now," sie said, the amusement plain in hir voice. Sie stepped forward and I saw the perfect lines of hir body, gently curved, breasts wreathed with vines and apple-like fruits, hips veiled in pale things like the most delicate of leaves or the wrapping of a chrysalis.

"I'm sorry," I said, still staring. "I kept going."

"Are we doing the metafiction thing, then?" sie asked me, perfectly contained, though there was madness in hir eyes.

"No," I said, quickly, a little dizzy. The scent of apple in the air overwhelmed me. Everything seemed porous in my reality right now. Had I stepped into Faerie? Was I drugged, or was I on the astral somehow?

"Come here," sie said, and I realized sie was holding the apple I had given hir in one hand.

I approached hir and stood mere inches away, looking into hir earth-deep eyes. "What…?"

Sie breathed out and I was momentarily stunned from the power of hir spirit. "I like it when you visit me," sie said, though I sensed a fathomless darkness behind that compliment. "I'll give you the key you need to negotiate your beloved god-queen's release for the Sabbath."

"Thank you, my lord-queen," I said, still oh so dizzy.

Sie held up a branch-sharp finger. "Not yet," sie said, smiling too sweetly.

I looked at hir perfect pointing hand, knowing that the only vestige of reality lay in hir other hand, the apple I had offered—

Sie lowered it.

I looked down.

"Oh," I said.

I was definitely in the astral. My jeans weren't that tight but my cock was clearly visible now as a bulge in them and finally I felt my aching desire for hir rush through my body. "Oh," I said again.

"Yes, oh-oh- _oh_ -oh-oh," sie said, humming a song I could not place at the moment, perhaps would never place. "You want me."

"I do," I confessed.

"Your challenge, should you accept it!" sie declared suddenly, waving that hand.

"Uh-oh…"

"I'll give you the key if you make me come," sie said.

"Oh, God," I said. Never had I been more enthralled by the closing of a trap.

"It's the perfect arrangement," sie said. "I can argue I didn't make you cheat, he can wax dramatic about how I did, and you can be torn to pieces lamenting the conflict."

"Thanks, my lord-queen," I said, my soul resigned to the grand experience and my heart hammering with excitement.

"No problem, honey-child," sie said, and hir eyelashes fluttered down in one flawless, brutally charming wink.

"So—" I took a deep breath. The astral thing between my legs ached so badly. "What can I do for you, my lord-queen?"

Sie blinked again, fluttered those perfect eyelids at me once more. "You can make me _come_ ," sie repeated patiently.

"No, I mean—" I ached. "How do I do it? Do I suck you? Do I fuck you? What do I do for you, my lady-lord?"

Sie smirked. I could sense it as much as I could see it, that curve of hir perfect mouth. "Oh, sweet little darling," sie murmured, "you know that I am like your personal god-queen in one way—"

I knew what was coming. Still I held my breath.

"I like to be _penetrated_ ," sie breathed out.

"Yeah, I know," I said, so close to hir I could smell the apples on the breath that pulsed out from hir. "That's part of the Mystery for you and your whole—cohort, I guess—"

"Oh, child, don't think of it like that right now," sie said. "I don't want to hear theology! I named my price and you can take it or leave it, so fuck me or don't, honey-creature."

Sie was an unbelievable parody of feminine charms in a way that turned them inside out and made them something other than female, and somehow sie was all the more desirable for it. That was always how I had perceived this goddess-concept, whether it was Aphrodite or Freddie or a fairy queen holding the torch. But somehow when this Queen of Apples wore the crown of the gender-mad sex fiend that was the twilight goddess of love—

—sie was sharper, wilder, more mad-eyed. I looked down at hir, even though I knew sie was easily taller than me when sie wanted to be.

Sie smiled up at me and I saw little fangs in hir sweet mouth and twilight fires dancing in hir eyes.

I looked further down, at the fluid lines of hir hips, covered so elegantly in something like a chrysalis.

"Where do I fuck you?" I said.

Sie giggled and touched a slim wood-grained finger to hir dark lips. "Why don't you find out?" And sie spread hir legs; sie emerged from the chrysalis.

I groaned at the sight that met me.

Between the nymph-like legs of the fairy Queen of Apples, uncurling from within the wet depths of some cocoon-like thing, was no ordinary cock or cunt or anything in between but the slick, slender extending tendrils of a sticky carnivorous plant, curled around some hidden inside. They trembled even in this thick, fragrant air and they gleamed with honey nectar.

I dropped to my knees in an instant, some part of me distantly wondering what _he_ thought of this, whether some part of him was with me still, entranced and turned on by this gorgeous creature as I was, or whether he was fuming in silent jealousy, or whether he was simply voyeuring with one delicate fingernail tapping his mouth in thought. I could not imagine my god-queen, bonded to me as he was even in the depths of my own underworld, would consent to completely miss such a display.

The Lord-Queen of Apples sprawled back onto the vines and mossy stones above me. "I'll only wait so long, oh, honey-child."

I set one hand on hir strong thigh and I leaned forward—

Instantly I was dizzy with the scent of hir nether flowers, the sweet scent like agave had mixed its essence with apple-cinnamon and all of it framed by rich dark honey with the slightest hint of unearthly—

Oh, I didn't know any more but I leaned forward and sucked at one of the sticky tendrils.

I groaned again, muffled in my throat, at the smoky-sweet taste like there was a fire burning deep in hir hole that gave out only sweet sweet fumes. The little sticky filaments trembled around my tongue as I licked at them—

I realized too late I was losing control of my thoughts, that my mind would go where sie wanted it to—

Because I tasted honeysuckle, the way I had tasted it in my childhood stealing blossoms from neighboring gardens and nibbling on their nectar. I was ten and it was summer and I was in the fields beyond the local community pool, grabbing honeysuckle blossoms off the fences and sucking down their little drops of nectar like it was a sport. I was going to be sunburned in the evening if I wasn't careful but for now I was playing in the flowers, innocent. In the evening the creeping fears would come and I would wake up screaming my strange hypochondriac terrors of every illness under the sun and my parents would not be able to figure out why I was so afraid.

I disappeared down a hole of such thoughts, balancing precariously on the line between the golden light of summer late afternoon and the darkness filled with anxiety on the other side of the day's twilight. Some part of me was still gasping into some flower-cunt, tasting unearthly honey, sucking at hir strange pieces. But—

"A servant of mine," sie said, "looked at a key of yours."

Sie lounged back against the vines and the moss, legs wide open but now hooking around my shoulders to draw me close, to cradle me firmly in hir thighs against that sweet honey-hole that tasted so faintly and distinctly of apples.

I groaned, dizzy, not wanting to fall off either edge of the tightrope. On one side lay painful nostalgia for a time I would never recapture; on the other lay such an old terror I didn't want to re-encounter.

Patiently, sie said, "Do you remember?"

I licked slowly at hir strange flower, probing deeper with my tongue.

"In the strange mall beneath the earth," sie said, "the one you so amusingly think looks like Montreal!"

I reached up with one hand and parted the wet moving parts in front of me. I kissed the slick rippling pieces of flesh and flower.

"I'm very interested," sie said, "in what you open with it."

I shuddered, inches away from the center of hir sex. "What…?"

"I took a little look inside the box, sweet," sie said.

My gut turned over though my cock was still so hard—I didn't know why but that terrified me—

"I saw white bone," sie said soft and dreamily.

I understood, in my sexed-up state with my mind blasted wide open by the mad fairy's close presence, what sie meant. I tried to hold onto the knowledge and force it away at the same time.

"You'll remember when the time comes, honey, _darling_ ," sie said and sie smiled so sweetly—

Something in hir body lunged forward and grabbed me. Slick tentacles all smelling of honey and apples gathered me up, tugging my clothes easily away from my body. I could remember no more. I let hir pull away my pants; my astral cock ached for hir mysterious hole too much for me to resist.

"It's time for _me_ to get to come," sie explained.  
I let the strange slick vines draw me down, down to hir hole and before they could put me in there without effort from me I grabbed hir bare wood-brown hips and thrust myself inside that strange tight fold at the heart of the flower-cunt.

Hir whole lithe vegetative body writhed and squirmed as I began to enter hir, and the vines and branches that cradled hir chest shook as if in a wind. For just an instant I focused on that sight—a Queen of Faerie laid out on the mossy rocks before me, writhing in ecstatic carnality as my cock pushed deeper and deeper into hir, eyes gleaming iridescent, almost insectile as the humanoid mask slipped.

Then I couldn't think about anything but how tight hir flower-hole was, how there didn't seem to be any end to it—I thrust my cock deeper and, without thinking any other thought (I couldn't think about anything but fucking that hole right now, remember?), I made the thing bigger, and bigger again—

There seemed to be less of the rest of my body to compensate, it occurred to me distantly—not that I was any _smaller_ exactly but I felt half-hollow, my spirit barely able to stretch from the tip of my toes to the crown of my head with it filling up this massive cock inside the fae lord-queen's body now. My etheric body was warped and distorted but I didn't care.

"Mmm _mmm_ ," sie breathed out, and the hands with which sie reached up to take hold of my face were four-fingered, long and stick-like almost. "Sweet creature. Don't forget your task."

I groaned helplessly.

"Oh but you fill me though," sie said dreamily. "Now it's time for me to fill you."

"Mm?" I could only manage that soft noise.

Sie shrugged hir narrow shoulders and the vines and branches and leaves and fruits all spilled away from hir chest to reveal small pert breasts like half-grown apples; at their tips were tiny red-violet petals, fluttering gently around little buds of nipples.

I shuddered and immediately leaned in, still so comfortably filling hir below; I took hold of one firm little nipple with my mouth and, as sie cradled me close and I frantically fucked hir hole, I sucked hir honey-sweet divine fae essence into me, drinking down something not quite liquid, the faintest fizzing on my tongue, the sweetest taste.

Sie sighed breathlessly. "Sweet child! Let me see what you become now—"

I shuddered as the nectar of hir breasts took hold of my body and began to change it.

My vision blurred and then disappeared as the flesh of a fruit grew up around my eyes; I cried out in alarm but kept fucking hir. Those long thin sharp fingers traced my eyelids, then suddenly gently prised them up and plucked out the little fruits my eyes had become. I heard the soft noises of hir teeth sinking into them, the gulp of hir swallowing, and then my vision returned anew but stranger, shattered into a million pieces by my weird new faceted eyes.

I drew down another drink of hir sweet nectar from hir breast and watched a million tiny pictures of my body twist and distort and change.

My skin bulged as my muscle-fibers became tiny vines, and then it peeled away with just a slight sunburn-like ache and they burst free. Fine branches sprouted and forked and forked again from each shoulder-blade until they grew leaves and buds and then bloomed into wings of flowers.

"Beautiful," sie murmured, "beautiful—"

I realized sie was bleeding, faintly, dark but luminescent sticky sap and I wondered why until I realized that the vines I was now made of from top to toe were thorned—

—the berries started to grow, small and pink, unripe, all along my body.

Sie shook helplessly with every thrust I made now and I understood that my cock had become an enormous root, shoving hir strange insides apart to find a place to settle inside hir, but sie squirmed so much my beast of a cock could not find a place to take root there. Nevertheless I kept trying, kept fucking hir.

After a little while hir eerie musical gasps turned to softer, steadier moans, and hir spasms became deft pumps of hir hips; still sie moved too fast for my cock to find what it was looking for inside of hir.

Sie smiled a million sharp little teeth and I saw the light inside of hir, deep down in hir throat, saw the heat I had felt on my yearning cock. I realized sie was in control of this all, had always been even as sie shook in delirious ecstasy on my improbably massive shaft impaling hir.

I had grown used to my new fae eyes by now and could see the nature of the outside of my body—I looked almost crocheted of golden vines and silvery thorns, little pink new berries clinging to them in the gaps, but inside that lattice there was nothing, no light at all, only the faint shadows of half-vanished organs—

I retreated from my vision enough to realize how much I was perceiving from _elsewhere_ , from the leafy antennae sweeping back from the tips of my ears. I perceived the magic that burned heavy in the air around us and the magic still spilling from hir body into mine as I—

(I had an instant of lucidity and wondered if I should keep going. But God, sie felt so good, sie tasted so good, and I was so empty and yearning for hir, and this was all so _exciting_ and so real to me right there and then.)

—drew down a last drink of hir nectar.

What was left of my organs inside me shriveled and then popped and out came a swarm of bee-souls, little lights like the essence of honey itself had been made ethereal. They filled me to the brim in moments and my hips bucked hard into the mad fae queen's eldritch flower-cunt and the huge root that had been my cock found its rightful place inside of hir.

Orgasm rose up through me like water rising up through a tree, slow and steady, moving first up my cock itself and then pooling in my belly to run down my legs and rise up my chest. I shuddered and sagged against hir but it didn't _stop_ , I kept coming as it filled my whole body.

The berries on me grew ripe and as dark as the violet in a nebula.

"Aren't you beautiful when you're my creature," said the Lord and Lady of Apples beneath me on the rocks in a breath with a million souls in it.

Shivering with the impossible pleasure of it still, the root of my cock still pumping orgasmic bliss into the rest of my body, I raised my head to look down at hir just as sie reached a hand up to touch my cheek.

I perceived then that the light that filled hir delicate divine fae body was like what now filled mine, but vaster and weirder: the ethereal plasma of souls of a million brilliant creatures far greater and stranger than honeybees.

"My turn," sie said, "sweet creature."

Sie began to pluck the berries from my body and put them in hir sharp-toothed mouth. When hir teeth crushed my fruits I felt them pop and break and dissolve sweetly on hir tongue with a strange savory pain that only heightened the endless orgasm that still pulsed through me. Dazed, I watched as sie ate the fruits of my body one by one, hir long fingers sliding into the thorny vines of my body here and there to pick them, leaving hir unearthly-scented sap on my vine-bones. I shuddered and shook atop hir.

"Oh," sie murmured, "you do satisfy me. You are sweet."

Where sie could not reach the fruits of my body, hir own vines gathered them up and brought my sweet flesh to hir hungry mouth and sie ate and ate as I lapsed into a euphoric gasping daze on top of hir ruthlessly yielding body, the endless orgasm rising and falling all through my body. Distantly I sensed a brittle weakness spreading through my body as sie ate the juicy berries plucked from my vines, but it meant nothing at all, it meant nothing as the edges of my body began to crumble and fall away, desiccated, lifeless, the petals of my wings going first, then the leaves and bits and pieces of vine and twig began falling then too.

When the Queen of Apples swallowed the last sweet bit of my fruits, all of my body finally dried up and crumbled to the ground, the bee-souls shimmering and fading away in the rich green darkness—

—and all that remained of me outside of the fae queen was the huge bulb-like structure of my balls. Beyond that my massive cock, swollen to tree-like proportions, plunged into hir.

" _Hmmmm,_ " sie gasped and then with a moan and a shudder sie opened hir legs wide, relaxed, and pulled the whole of me up into hir hole.

It closed up tight behind me, once again fronds and filaments sticky with strange nectar-syrup, but now a little lusher and riper-looking than before, I knew somehow—

—and then something inside of hir opened up to receive me fully at last and I entered a honey-sweet sticky mystery place buzzing with love and sex and joy, so warm, so soothing on the cock that was my whole body now—

—and with a musical shriek sie came too.

In an instant the gorgeous sweet warmth around me erupted in flame. Everything was divine fire and I burned ecstatically in it as, somewhere far away in a strange fae garden, sie writhed in hir own unending bliss. I burned and burned till I was nothing but my innermost spark—

\--and finally, after I'd held on so long, through such an unending orgasm, I gave in and lost my mind to the mad ecstasy of it. Ego death finished circling and swooped in to take me, and everything after that is a brilliant haze.

* * *

Somewhere still and dark, distant and calm, I rested. There were stars on the edges of my vision but I knew I didn't have to worry about them—

A voice stabbed into the dark, not too forceful but shocking in my current state. "Hey, boss."

I tried to ignore it and stay as a grain of cosmic dust in the ancient void, but it didn't work. Squinting, I came to, and then I opened my eyes.

"Hey, boss," said the short heavyset man in drab clothes and a maintenance worker's overalls, "you can't sleep here. I gotta send you away." He had a wheeled trashcan propped up in front of him and a concerned but resigned look on his face.

"Oh, sorry," I said, getting to my feet. I'd been sitting on the ledge of one of the planters in the market garden. I didn't exactly feel like I'd been sleeping, and at the same time my head ached with the fog of unconsciousness. "Sorry. I'll go."

"If you need to get help or a place to stay," the worker began, somewhat tiredly, and then he peered at me, realizing that although my beard was wild, my clothes were a little neater than those of most of the homeless folk around here.

"Nah, nah," I assured him, brushing off my jeans and tugging at my jacket. My spine was stiff. "Don't worry, I've got a home to go back to. I just, uh…"

He stared at me suspiciously.

"I came here to have my lunch and after the fourth piroshky I just kind of did the food coma thing," I said.

"Your lunch?" he said, incredulous.

"Yeah," I said.

He looked out past me at the view of the Sound.

I turned and stared into the darkness of night, the lights of the Ferris wheel and the attractions below still going, but everything else deeply dark. Impulsively, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. It showed me _8:11_.

"Oh, uh, wow," I said.

"Yeah, you okay, boss?" he said.

"I'm fine," I said. I looked around; the garden was as it usually was in winter. No eldritch growths here, thanks. But hadn't the Queen of Apples said sie would give me something in return for what I did for hir? I couldn't quite remember what it was now, but I knew I hadn't fucked this queen for free. Sie was no Freddie, after all—even if I wondered if part of him had been there.

My gaze landed on the slightest glint of light on the planter next to where I'd been sitting. My heart skipped and I knew it was important. "Oh, yeah! Almost left the thing I got at Tenzing Momo," I said, and snapped it up. Putting the peculiar little object in my pants pocket, I nodded at the man who'd woken me. "Sorry for being trouble," I said. "I'm going home," and I dashed out of the garden and back to what I knew as civilization.

* * *

I skipped and ran halfway through the five blocks home, exhilarated and jittery at my confused memories of what had just happened. It had been good—was Freddie mad? What had even occurred there? What was this mysterious item the Queen of Apples had left for me?

Once I was home and had picked my way past the clutter into my bedroom with the dirty clothes strewn over the floor, I took it out of my pocket and had a look.

The peculiar object was a three-dimensional eight-pointed star like the sparkly currency in some kind of video game; it was just a little smoother than I expected at its edges and gently warm in my hand. A faint golden-red color suffused its quartz-like material.

I couldn't figure out anything else.

I laid out my Tarot reading cloth over my bed, set the fae thing at the top of it, and shuffled the cards. I didn't know if my usual decks would work without Freddie reliably present, so I turned on a Bowie album--a long and obscure one called _1\. Outside_ —and pulled out the Official Starman Tarot Deck. I got to work with that.

I had been shuffling for less than a minute when my hands fumbled suddenly and three cards slid neatly out of the deck.

 _The Ace of Wands_. Freddie liked to use that one to ask me to give him the D. It was to the left of the other two; I suspected it was the past. That meant the next card to its right was the present—

 _The Four of Wands_ , but _reversed_. My foundations were in shambles. I was somewhere unfit for the magic sie had given me—

I don't know how I understood and interpreted the cards but it flowed effortlessly into my mind as I looked down at them. I knew what they meant.

 _The Star_. This was the future where I unlocked the way to use the strange little star-stone. It was pure and it opened the way to the astral plane.

Something clicked in my brain. A vivid vision played out behind my eyes: a small, clean room, with only one door. The edges of the room had been cleansed with salt, the whole thing consecrated. It was very neat and tidy. At the center of it was the star-stone. And when I opened the door—

—the astral plane.

"Oh, shit," I said. "Does it really have to be that clean?"

I impulsively pulled another card. _Eight of Pentacles_ —meaning do the damn work.

I looked at my messy room and sighed. "Not in time for tonight," I said, "and I need to get this _done_."

I had another idea. I didn't care if Bowie's spirit didn't like it.

* * *

The streets were beginning to clear by the time I set off for Capitol Hill in my old jacket and sparkly baseball cap. It was quarter to ten at night and by now, on a weeknight, the commuters were long home and the bar cruisers were packed into seats at counters. A few travelers, late shoppers, and homeless people still paced through the streets, but I ignored them.

I had a plan.

My apartment was a terrible mess, and I wasn't getting it clean in time to bring Freddie back for Valentine's Day. Hotels around here were absurdly expensive. But there was an alternative.

Up in the gayborhood of Capitol Hill, there were two bathhouses where one could rent rooms for the night. I would pick the one that was more accepting of trans people and get a small room there. It seemed in keeping with the overall theme of my practice, really.

The Western Bathworks was the more viable option. There was one other place, a local one rather than a franchise and the cheaper of the two, but they were rumored to scrutinize your driver's license to make sure it had an M for a gender marker, and mine, unfortunately, didn't have that yet. So I went to the Bathworks.

It was only a mile up the hill, just off one of the main streets, in a plain squat gray two-story building with inconspicuous doors hidden behind at the end of a concrete corridor with yellow walls. I pulled one open and stepped into the narrow gleaming passageways, always heated to steamy levels even in the depths of winter.

I turned the corner and faced the sales windows. For a moment I just blinked into them, and then I handed over my driver's license and a credit card to whoever was behind the glass.

I hurried through the hot damp hallways, past the vending machines and the porn lounge and the showers—

I spared a moment of regret that I couldn't participate in the usual festivities tonight. The spirit of David Bowie had told me no sex, and I'd already violated that on the astral plane. It would really set things off kilter if I did it in the physical realm as well.

I slipped into my rented room, locked the door behind me, and started setting up.

Salt around the walls. Someone would clean it up; it wouldn't be the worst thing they'd ever cleaned here.

A small LED candle on the stand next to the bed.

I traced saltwater into arcane patterns on the mirrors all around me, and I took the thing the Queen of Apples had given me out of my pocket.

It shone warmly in the dim light, giving off an aura of power that was unmistakably its own.

I set it down on the bed before me and began to chant softly.

I didn't have mantras, exactly--other than the occasional lyric from certain songs. I just pulled at whatever music was in my head and sang out my desires. It usually sounded vaguely like the melodies of Queen—I listened to it a lot, after all.

"Come forth come forth a gateway to the infinite," I sang. "Come forth come forth a door to the astral plane. Come forth come forth for me—"

I breathed slowly and steadily as I sang out, and within seconds I knew reality was melting away around me. The whole little room was too bright. I was really somewhere else.

I breathed out slowly, imagining the air I exhaled forming a bubble of safety and protection around me.

Then I turned and I opened the door.

Beyond—

—no longer was there the narrow dark hallway of a gay bathhouse, only dimly lit by neon lights. Now there was the infinite void, filled with terribly distant stars, and through it all, leading from my feet to somewhere I knew nothing of, was a narrow silvery path, ascending into the darkness with only faraway stars somewhere beneath it.

This was what I had come here for.

I stepped out onto the path, willing myself to forget that as a child I had had a fear of heights, that in my twenties I had tried to walk on the glass skyway above the Grand Canyon and nearly fainted.

I took another step, and then another. I didn't seem to be getting close to any kind of destination. Well, of course. I had to set it myself.

"I want to see—" I hesitated, and then I said again, "I want to see the Bride of God. I want to see the Shekhina."

I had promised to meet Freddie again on Friday, and Friday was the Sabbath. I would find help with my own old goddess.

But the path had no response for me. It stayed flat and continued to lead to nowhere.

I thought about it for a moment, and then I said, "I will see the Shekhina. I will go to her."

The ribbon of starlight beneath my feet rippled and shivered and then—

—there was a small, ordinary door, like you'd see on any plain brick townhouse in Flatbush in Brooklyn in the '60s, at the end of the path, not very far away.

I went forward to this door; it looked familiar, like the door to my grandmother's apartment. It wasn't--but it looked like that.

I reached for the knob instinctively, and then I stopped myself and knocked firmly instead.

For several seconds I heard no response. After almost a minute, I knocked again, a little more rapidly and firmly.

The sound of footsteps reached me from within, and then less than thirty seconds later the door swung open.

A middle-aged woman faced me, wearing slacks and a sweater, her dark ginger hair pinned up in a bun. She peered up at me with wary eyes, then blinked in surprise as she recognized me. "What are you doing here, _bubbeleh_?"

It was her. I had reached the Shekhina, the Presence of God in the shape of a divine woman, the only goddess of my Jewish people.

I said, "I need you to help me—" I hesitated. "My lady?"

"You can call me _bubbe_ ," she said with a weary smile. "Come in, come in. Do you want coffee? I don't have tea."

"Um," I said.

"It's decaf," she said. "It's late enough, nu?"

"Yeah, okay, thanks," I said as I followed her into the little apartment.

It wasn't my grandmother's apartment in Flatbush. I knew that. But somehow it looked so much like that—the little bookshelves pushed up against the walls, the knick-knacks, the faded paintings. The Shekhina made her way back to the dining room and gestured for me to sit down at the table.

"I just need to put the kettle on," she said, "I'll be back soon, don't worry." And she ducked into the little kitchen.

All of this was surreal. It felt too normal. It felt too plain. But I could sense without asking that I was in the presence of the great Kabbalistic goddess. A bright invisible light radiated off her ordinary body, and I felt full of the Presence when I got too close.

I waited in the dining room with its narrow table and tall chairs for her to return. It really did feel like my grandmother's apartment, even though I knew it wasn't; I was sure my mother would appear at any moment to scold me for fidgeting. Still I fidgeted, picking at my nails and tugging absently at one earring.

The noise of cups clattering and a kettle beginning to whistle in the kitchen seemed out of place; surely a goddess shouldn't have to do any of that. But that was what she wanted to do, so that was what I heard.

After a few minutes she emerged again, carrying two mismatched mugs full of black coffee on a chipped tray. She set it down on the table and pushed one mug in my direction. "Here, go ahead and drink—" She caught sight of my hesitant look. "This isn't Faerie, or the underworld. This is the House of God."

"I didn't know the House of God served decaf," I said, but I took my mug and took a sip. It was not very good coffee, and I wondered why one even bothered drinking something like this without caffeine. But I wanted to be polite for once.

"The House of God serves many things in its service to the people, child," she said, settling down with her own mug of coffee. "Why are you here tonight? It's late."

I hesitated. Now that I was here in the House of God, facing his Presence in her kindly form, nerves were getting the better of me. But I said, "I have a favor to ask of you, Shekhina." I couldn't quite bring myself to address her like an ordinary Jewish grandmother, no matter what she said.

"Oh, that's what makes you show up!" she said, her voice half-chiding, half-resigned. "You never just call."

"Sorry," I stammered automatically.

"Don't sit there and apologize, _bubbeleh_ ," she said, "just call more often."

"I do," I said. "I light the candles and sing the prayers every Friday night."

"Some prayers, anyway," she said. "The ones you remember."

"Yes," I said, "the ones I remember. I do what I can."

"Did you do it last Friday?" she asked.

I paused. Then I said, "I was tired and had just run out of candles—" But she was shaking her head reprovingly. "I usually do," I finally settled for saying.

"Well, that's true," she said. "What do you need from the Bride of God and Protector of Israel?"

"I need to invoke your authority in a matter with," I hesitated, "some not-quite-Greek gods."

The Powers that flowed in me and in Freddie weren't exactly Greek; they were more ancient Aegean, the ecstatic and liminal gods of the warm mountainous islands who thrived right around the same time Judaism was budding in the Levant. I didn't know whether that would make things better or worse for my bid here. The Jewish people had a long and fractious history with the gods of the Greeks, and besides, whether they were technically Greek or not my new-old gods seemed to lean into it. I was well aware that when Dionysos had first laid claim to me, he had seen it as scoring a win over the peculiar unnameable God to whom I still said prayers (almost) every Friday.

Perhaps this would give the Shekhina a chance to strike back.

"Well, what is it, nu?" she said, her eyes suddenly hard as if she knew what I was going to say and did not approve. "Out with what you want."

I faltered for a moment.

Well, I was here already and there was no way out but forward.

"These gods have a hold of my astral husband," I said, "and without your intervention, I won't be able to see him on the Sabbath." I held my breath without meaning to.

She picked up her coffee and took a long sip. Finally, she said, "Well, how is that my business?"

I exhaled abruptly. "What?"

"I said, I don't see how that has anything to do with me," the Shekhina said.

"But—" I tried to speak and just said again, "But—"

"This isn't about your butts, young man," she said.

"A married couple has to have sex on the Sabbath evening," I finally managed. "It's a _mitzvah_."

She stirred her coffee with a small, slightly tarnished spoon. "And you two are a married couple?"

"I pledged my soul to him in astral marriage," I said. "I have a contract with him." Without thinking I gestured at the devotional tattoo on my right arm.

The Shekhina's sharp eyes caught it and she smiled thinly. "Oh, you got a tattoo for him. That's nice. Did you know I have one too?"

She pulled up her sleeve and I flinched at the ugly sight of faded numbers I hadn't wanted to see.

"This isn't like that," I said. "I'm reclaiming that power for life, not death."

She pulled her sleeve down again and settled back against her chair. "You still haven't proven to me you're married to him, _bubbeleh_ ," she said. "I don't think you are. I didn't see you exchange vows under the canopy, or step on that glass. You claim you had a contract but it wasn't really a _ketubah_ , now was it?"

"Oh," I said. I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

She took another sip of coffee and watched me, utterly calm.

I said, "If you help us now, as soon as I get him back for good, we'll do it then."

She raised an eyebrow. "You talked to him about that?"

"He loves getting married to me," I said. "He made me do it once, as an elopement in the dark, half-astral, the first time I admitted my Mystery goddess was real, and again, with a contract," I gritted my teeth and gestured at the tattoo again, "once I knew who he was." I paused a beat and said, "He won't mind doing it a third time. He'll be happy."

"Well then," she said. She stirred her coffee and had another sip. "It is an advantageous match. A humble son of my people marrying a Queen of the Persians. I've always liked their god and his servants—of course, as false gods go."

I hesitated. "He's—" In truth I didn't really know what Freddie thought now of the religion he'd adhered to in life. I understood it was still important to him—I saw glimpses of Zoroastrian motifs in the deepest depths of his soul sometimes—but I didn't know what he would say about his relationship with it. So I didn't want to speak for him on what had been such a private and personal matter for him during his life.

"It doesn't matter," she said, reading my silence. "He's a god himself now, yes, of course," though she rolled her eyes a bit at this statement and I thought I heard a hint of sarcasm in her voice, "and he consorts with foreign Powers, but he is still who he was." She paused, and then said, "Well, who he was is still a part of who he is. He's a little more than a man now." She shrugged. "It is what it is. Your new god is who he is."

"Will you do this for me?" I asked one more time, and then I corrected myself: "For us."

She set her coffee mug down with a soft click. "One more condition, _bubbeleh_ ," she said.

I paused, drawing a quick breath and watching her intently. "What?"

"You have to join a Torah study group," she said.

"What," I said.

She gestured sharply with her spoon. "Don't give me that look. You heard what I said."

"I did," I admitted, "but I don't understand why you're making it a condition here."

The Shekhina clucked her tongue impatiently. "Look at you, without a friend in the world! And you've been missing the Word of God in your life for years, and all the good it brings! I'm trying to help you, _bubbeleh_."

"Oh," I said, somewhat dubiously. I finished my own coffee with a grimace. Then I said: "All right. When all of this is over, I'll join a Torah study group and maybe even make friends."

Some tension eased in the air and she smiled. "Good," she said, "good." For a moment no one said anything, and then she continued, "Well, then what are you waiting for, nu? I expect a real challah this Shabbat. Say the blessings over the bread, the wine, and the candles, and the Name will be sure you get what you need."

I took a deep breath and then let it out, feeling my shoulders slump a little. "Thank you," I said.

"Don't go thanking me now," she said. "Are you done with your coffee?"

"Yeah," I said. "Thank you for having me, Shekhina."

Now she smiled a little more warmly. "You're a good boy, Ari." She got up from her seat, reaching over to gather up my mug.

I ducked my head a little, refused to look her in the eyes. "I should be going," I said. "Uh, I'll see you on Friday, then."

"Maybe, maybe not," she said, and then at the look on my face she added, "Oh, _bubbeleh_ , I just mean I can't guarantee I'll be there in this form. You know how it is."

I didn't exactly know how it was, but I nodded anyway. "Okay," I said. "See you then." And I turned to head out the narrow hallway, through the entryway, and back out onto—

—not the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn, but an endless flat expanse of rainbow stars. I turned and glanced behind me. The little brownstone flat was gone. I was standing on a single chunk of run-down sidewalk, an island of surreal normalcy in the midst of the starry void, so black and so alive with color.

I said, "I want to go back to my body in the real world." I remembered, thought better of it, and said, "I'm going back to my body in the real world."

Nothing happened at all, and in that moment I remembered two things.

The first was that I hadn't wanted to do these negotiations with my real body in the balance; the second was that the Queen of Apples had only promised me a key to reach the Shekhina with. Sie had not promised me a safe way home.

I took a deep breath and stared out at the grand expanse of multicolored points of light and nothing but emptiness in between. At least I _could_ breathe. Well, maybe I wasn't really here after all—maybe I just needed to wake up and I'd be back in the nondescript little room at the bathhouse, maybe with a bit of a headache.

Softly I sang a famous lyric, almost under my breath, challenging the world around me to answer: was this the real life or just fantasy?

The void hummed the melody back at me, faintly, the distant stars picking up on it and reflecting it at me changed, made more beautiful than my voice could manage alone. For a moment, I listened to the music of the stars—and then I realized I still had no answer, no way home.

I closed my eyes and then opened them again. Still the vast cosmic depths greeted me. I closed my eyes once more and ran through a grounding exercise, drawing energy up through the magical cores of my body like water up through the roots of a tree, but the ground beneath me was too fragile and I could _feel_ it when I tried to draw on its calming earth power. I opened my eyes and still there was just this astral space.

"Freddie," I whispered, "where are you? Help me."

Somewhere, a star glittered. I took another deep breath, and then I stepped off the edge of the sidewalk and plummeted into the abyss.

Brilliant gleaming stars shot past me, blurring like special effects, and I tumbled and tumbled head over heels down down _down_ except up and down didn't matter anymore, it wasn't gravity pulling me but something else—

And with that realization the star-studded darkness around me tore like velvety shadows and I emerged into the light, roughly hitting a cool stone floor with my side, _ouch_.

I rolled over and sat up. "Ow," I said. "That hurt—" And I stopped because I processed what I was seeing.

I had landed on the balcony of a mansion sprawling over the beachfront of a gorgeous blue lake surrounded by mountains. The place seemed almost a castle, a genuine old European one, and at the far end of the balcony, next to a dragon, stood the Queen himself.

Freddie, like the Shekhina not long ago, had a teaspoon in one hand and had been gesturing with it as he leaned back on his chair at the table. The dragon (long and serpentine in the Eastern style, his scaly hide a deep burnished red-black) fastidiously clutched a cup of tea in one front claw; he had been listening to Freddie speak when I arrived.

My god-queen was not in the form of the agelessly youthful _kouris_ or the madly feminine Mother; he was _himself_ , a dark and fit man in his mid-thirties with short hair and an impressive mustache.

I blinked at the two of them. "Freddie…?"

"Ari!" he said, jumping up out of his seat. Then he paused, a guilty expression on his face. "Oh dear. This wasn't supposed to happen."

"To hear you talk about it, _none_ of this was supposed to happen," I said as I got to my feet, rubbing my bruised hip.

"That's not true, dear," he said with a patient gesture.

"Well, none of this was supposed to happen the way it's happened," I said. "How are you here? Where _is_ here?"

"So many questions," he said.

The dragon rumbled and tapped a claw on his teacup. "You should answer him, Fred," he said. The voice wasn't quite human but somehow still sounded familiar.

"Bruce Lee?" I said after a moment.

He chuckled, a sound like a low, pleasant roll of thunder.

"I thought you were busy in China," I said.

"Any god worth his salt can be in two places at once, darling," Freddie said. "You know that."

"But—" I caught myself. "Let's start with where here is."

He shrugged pensively and looked away; behind him the dragon gave a long windy sigh. Freddie looked back at him, rolled his eyes, and then returned his attention to me and said, "We're in northern Italy."

"One of its astral counterparts," Bruce clarified. I wasn't sure how he was speaking; the dragon's mouth didn't move, but the sound clearly came from him.

"Why?" I said.

"Now that I can't just up and _tell_ you, dear," Freddie said, only mild apology in his voice. "You'll understand in time."

That wasn't a line I enjoyed from other mortals, but I had to grudgingly allow there were reasons a god might have to use it. I said, "What's Bruce Lee—what are you doing here, Bruce?" Mid-sentence I realized I might as well direct the question at the dragon.

He took a sip of his tea and then delicately put the cup down, his motions naturally powerful and peculiarly graceful despite the size of his draconic body. "We're comparing notes," he said.

"Okay," I said, "fine, compare your notes. Freddie, I thought you'd, uh, gone missing."

He pressed his lips together awkwardly and fidgeted a little. "Well...you didn't really think my whole divine self could be _kidnapped_ , did you?"

"No," I admitted, "but Bowie said—"

"Oh, he has no idea what I'm doing, darling," Freddie said dismissively. "That's the whole point—it wasn't supposed to happen now but I might as well take advantage of it, dear, don't you see?"

"I don't see," I said.

"I am about to be very busy," he said, his voice suddenly more precise than ever, "as a god of all that I am."

Vaguely I wondered what that meant; I thought I should ask him what he was talking about, what was about to make him so busy. But something else was bothering me. "You're—you're fine?"

He tilted his head in surprise at me. "What do you mean?"

"I thought I was rescuing you," I said. "I thought you needed me to save you."

"Oh, that," he said. "Well, it's not _untrue_ , darling, really," he began, and then he stopped, and he glanced back at the dragon.

Bruce gave another weary sigh. "I'll leave the scrolls with you for now and take off. Stay safe and healthy, Ari." He took a last drink of his tea and then—it kind of hurt my eyes to look at but he just kind of slithered off into the sky, born away by sudden winds and the coiling motions of his own serpentine body.

I was left alone with Freddie, Freddie in a form I was barely used to seeing him in. No, that wasn't entirely true—I sensed him at the back of my head in this form often enough. But I rarely met him like this on the astral.

"Well, then," he said.

I realized I was shorter than him—we were both our mortal heights. I stammered, "Do you really need me?" I hadn't meant to say it like that, but it came out all wrong.

His eyes widened and he reached out to me. "Ari—"

"Don't," I said, my cheeks hot.

"I—" His expression softened. "I'm sorry. There are things I can't tell you, there's things I can't do for you, there's things I can't _be_ for you. But I will always need you at my side—however you _can_ be, darling."

"But this rescue thing," I said, "it's a game, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "No! No, not at all, I'd be giving it my whole attention if I could—" He caught his breath. "That part of me exists for you, love. I don't want to lose it anymore than you do."

"Then," I said, "is it only a shadow of you that loves me?"

He half-gasped, but it turned into a rueful laugh quickly. "Don't be absurd. I love you in any form, I'm mad for you—but the part of me you need to save loves you more than anything or anyone else. I can't…" He glanced away. "I can't have every aspect of my godhood revolve around you, love. No more than you could have every aspect of your being revolve around me."

"I feel like I do, sometimes," I said.

"Nonsense," he said, "you still sing other bands' music at karaoke. What's the one by that rubbish band?"

"You don't even like it!"

"No, I mean the name of the band!"

"Oh," I said, "you mean _Garbage_." Then I stopped myself. "We're getting off track!"

"We always do," he said, a hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. Then he snapped into seriousness. "There are bad things coming, my dear—terrors and the sort of things that make people despair. They're coming far too fast for my liking and I need to be on the move now. I can't turn all my power to your disposal." He hesitated, then sighed and said, "I'm sorry, lovey. I wish—" He cut off and glanced away from my eyes.

I dove into the sudden silence. "I know," I said. "Isn't that always the case? You're always fighting…" I trailed off, waiting for him to complete it so I didn't have to, but all he did was look back at me, his gaze suddenly cool and expectant.

He would wait for me to say it this time.

I took a deep breath and said, "You're always fighting the virus."

He rolled his eyes at my vagueness, but said, "Yes, of course."

I had seen in daydreams and fever dreams the essential shape of it: somewhere, on some plane of existence, my god-queen in one of his aspects fought forever, locked in constant combat with some horrible Beast or Serpent that was the astral manifestation of the virus that had destroyed his mortal body and all the societal ills that had let it thrive.

I said, "I know. I've always known. I don't expect you to make everything better for me. Even if it would be nice."

He smiled. "Careful what you wish for." He let that sink in for a moment and added, "You know how tempestuous my blessings are when they come upon you, darling."

"I—" I stopped myself on the brink of voicing something dangerous.

He watched me in silence, half-smiling now. He was still so beautiful, whatever form he was in. I still loved him so much.

I said, "I want it. I want to be a god like you someday." A beat passed. "I know you can't make everything better for me but that's not possible anyway and it's not what I want most. But I—" I hesitated just a fraction of a second, knowing that I couldn't give this god-queen of mine carte blanche to make me _a god like him_ , that it would mean terrible terrible things for my mortal life to do so. "I'm not signing off on any tragic fate, Freddie."

"You promised me a story," he said softly, "and you promised me your life." His perfect voice held an ineffable hunger, some kind of craving that I as a mortal man could not understand.

"You don't _want_ to see me suffer," I said, forcing the doubt out of my voice.

"Darling, what do you _think_ happens," he said, "when a dominatrix like me becomes a god?" He rolled his eyes and added, "Of course, you're right as much as you're wrong. I am a god of many aspects and almost _all_ of them want to see you happy." He sighed. "You stirred up dark powers in me and the cosmos, love. But I fight for you as much as I can."

"I know," I said.

"So fight for me too, darling," he said. "I need you right now. I need you more than ever—it's going to become very difficult for me quite shortly." He spoke of dark things but still he looked at me adoringly; he pressed his lips together as if to swallow his overbite, a terribly awkward and precious gesture, and he continued, "Won't you go and rescue me?"

I opened my mouth, and then I shut it. I still had a million unanswered questions, and I had no idea how to ask them.

He gave me a devastating wink.

My stomach and lower parts than that jittered inside me. "I will," I said. "I love you."

"Come here," he said.

I closed the short distance between us and in an instant he pulled me into his arms and kissed me hard.

He rarely romanced me in this form; it had always seemed, just as he'd said, a shape of his that belonged to the world and not to me. But every so often, there were moments.

I leaned into this one, my mouth opening against his, his divine breath mingling with mine.

And then he drew away and the castle balcony in Italy was gone. We were standing in a strange blank space with a spiral stairway leading back down to—

—the doorway of the bare little room in the Western Bathworks, where my body stood frozen in place, about to pull open the door.

I exhaled an embarrassed sigh of relief.

"Oh dear," Freddie said, amusement glinting in his handsome dark eyes. "You didn't think I'd let the Queen of Apples send you out here unprotected, did you?"

I flushed. "I didn't know how much you saw," I said.

"Love, I see everything that happens to you," he said. "You know that, don't you?" He grinned. "I wish I'd been around enough to join with the Queen's soul, though. God, when was the last time you fucked _me_ that deep, darling?"

I smiled. "I'll make it up to you on Friday night," I said, "Valentine."

He laughed and blew me a kiss and turned to go—

I reached after him.

—and then he was gone.

I sighed and started down the stairs to rejoin my body and get the hell out of there. It was way too late and I had work before noon tomorrow.

* * *

Outside the gate with the broken lock in the middle of the sketchy alleyway, I paused before reaching out to turn the knob. Movement at the corner of my vision—

It was a rat, chased by another rat across the wet uneven stones of the alleyway to the dumpsters on the other side, up against the fence that protected the rats from the dog park.

I made a face and turned away. I had gotten used to the rats. Sightings were only the most minor excitement to me now.

With that matter settled, I opened the gate and headed up the short flight of stairs (in dubious repair, of course) to the first landing and the door to my apartment.

I was about to get out my keys when the noise split the chilly night air—

—a distinct meow, long and mournful. It wasn't Juliet; her yowls were more piercing, and besides, this wasn't coming from inside my apartment, it was coming from _above_ , where the second-level rooftop provided entry to more miserable little apartments and the sagging deck stretched out over my kitchen.

I turned to look by deepest instinct.

Beyond the rickety railing at the top of the stairs lurked one of the rooftop cats, an elegant and self-possessed tortoiseshell by the name of Tweak. She was perpetually demanding of attention when she appeared, but appeared only rarely, preferring to stalk the gutters for prey and other things of interest.

Without a second thought, I climbed the remaining stairs, turned to face the cat, knelt down, and reached out a hand. "Come here, Tweak," I said. "Come here, baby girl, I love you." I talked like this to all cats who would let me.

Tweak looked at me for a long moment, her eyes very luminous and green. Then she danced and wove her way over, and she ducked her head against my outstretched hand and rubbed impatiently.

"Good girl," I said. "Good girl, what a sweetie."

She allowed this for seven seconds and then darted away without the impression of a second thought.

I looked after her for a moment, then straightened up. I looked up into the sky, where the clouds had finally cleared; I looked up at the tiny handful of stars visible here above the highrise buildings full of mostly empty luxury condos, despite the great Western city's light pollution. I dreamed that I was not trapped living in a crumbling hovel, working an erratic and exhausting job for little pay and less respect; instead I was out there in the stars.

Part of me knew that the dream was real in its own way. Another part of me still doubted, every time I stepped away from the astral plane. It had been almost an hour now. The memory was getting a little blurry around the edges. I might have imagined it. I might be deluding myself.

That was what doubt told me, but I couldn't let doubt drag me down. I had a god to rescue from the darkness inside me, and now I knew I had to do it for his sake as well as mine.

I got my keys out and made my way back down the stairs. It would be at least marginally warmer inside, and there was a bed for me to sleep in.

It was time to calm myself and rest before I headed into the storm that loomed ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [sex-related content notes]  
> (eroticized body horror; ambiguously sinister power differential between an immortal and a human; brief nonexplicit eye scream)
> 
> [other warnings]  
> (brief references to COVID-19; mention of suicidal ideation; brief nonexplicit Holocaust reference; nonexplicit discussion of HIV/AIDS)


End file.
